For the Parkers...

I promised Amy Parker that I would put something in our window when we went to the hospital... but that isn't going to happen (until later tonight when my parents put something up for us) because it was a bit of a surprise that we're here at the hospital and staying! Since I'm now overdue they sent us to Utah Valley Hospital this morning to have a "non-stress test" to make sure everything was okay with the munchkin. When they were monitoring her, her heart rate dropped really low at one point (which it luckily hasn't in the 9 hours since) but with overdue babies in these cases they induce labor. So Aaron and I are hanging out at Utah Valley about 3 hours away from my next round of prostaglandin gel and 9 hours away from them starting the pitocin and breaking my water! It looks like we'll be welcoming baby Wilk tomorrow! I hope this post is a good substitute for the lack of window notice! :)

First Time Blogger

I've never actually done this blogging thing before, so here it goes...

Now that finals are done for the semester there is only one thing to do, ICE CLIMB! I'm repenting this year from lack of ice climbing in previous years by starting early, and now that my ice climbing buddy/big brother is back in Utah I should be able to go more often.

Britt would like to come ice climbing with me, but unfortunately they don't make maternity harnesses. I guess we'll have to make it a family outing next season.

Tagged - KS/MO Style!

So, I've been tagged. Being in the blogging world it was bound to happen. My Aunt Heather who lives in Kansas (right on the border of MO though, I belive - right Heather?) and apparently in the KS/MO area when you are tagged you have to write 7 things about yourself! Provo style is 6, so for those of you wondering why you'll get 7 funny facts - that is why!

1. I can't remember my first day of 6th grade.
Why you ask? Well, the night after my first day of 6th grade I decided to attempt some pretty daring tricks on our family trampoline. Unfortunately, I ended up landing my double back flip on the in-ground barbeque behind the trampoline. My concussion and short-term amnesia wiped out my whole first day of 6th grade. It made for an interesting and embarassing second day!

2. I'm allergic to milk... sort of.
My mother discovered this fact shortly after I turned one and was okay to have cow's milk when she fed me a bite of cream soup at a restaurant. My face blew up and I stopped breathing, so they rushed me to the hospital to pump my stomach... and also informed my mom I had a deathly allergy to milk. Weird part - I completely out-grew the allergy as a pre-teen and then grew back into it as a young teenager. Though I don't risk death in eating it now I usually stick with a child-sized ice cream (and even that makes my throat ichy and my lips a little bit puffy!).

3. I have a talented tongue.
Now don't take that the wrong way! I can make a three leave clover with my tongue and tie a cherry stem in a knot in a matter of seconds. Proof (though blurry) of the first is to the right. It's hard to take a picture of your own tongue. Cool though, huh? :)

4. My dad nicknamed me "Bearcat" for a year in high school.

No, my high school mascot was not a bearcat and I didn't suddenly find a love for either bears or cats. I played year-round competitive volleyball from age 10-18 and was college volleyball bound. The school that recruited me most was the University of Cincinnati "Bearcats". They would send me three letters a week during the recruiting season even though I had no desire to move anywhere NEAR Ohio. My dad thought it was so funny he called me "Bearcat".

5. I want to get a PhD.
I LOVE school. My dream job would be to be a professional student and keep getting different degrees in different fields. But I do want to get a PhD after my last kid goes to kindergarten so I can be a college history professor. What could be cooler than convincing college kids who think history is lame of how cool it is and taking my family with me for "research trips" where I get paid to sit in archives and read really cool old books and manuscripts?!?!?! I get chills just thinking about it!

6. I make terrible cookies.
There are lots of desserts I can cook well (cakes, brownies, other stuff...) but I stink at making cookies. I can make one kind of cookies well - Rollo cookies - and all of my other cookies are flops. I'm a complete cookie failure.

7. I LOVE food.
I don't just mean I enjoy it a little bit. I really LOVE food. Few things make me happier than good food and eating it. Because of this, much of Aaron and I's monthly date budget goes to eating out just because I love to eat! He loves to spoil me and find excuses to get me yummy food that he knows will always put me in a good mood.

Alright, enough about me! I want to hear something about you all! I'm tagging Maggi Ross, Bekah Gardner, Dani Firth, Clare Gourley, Lindsay Miranda and Allison Skousen! Feel free to choose between Provo style and KS/MO style. :)

Preparing for Baby

So Aaron and I started the real, intense baby preparation last weekend. We were supposed to have a 6 hour prenatal class that covered everything from labor signs, to breathing techniques to breastfeeding. Unfortunately the instructor got a bad case of the flu, so Aaron and I will go into labor and delivery only slightly more educated than we are now (I'll be gathering LOTS of advice from experienced moms in the next 5 weeks). Women delivered babies for 1000s of years without birthing classes - I can do it too! :)

So, since Aaron had set the day aside for baby preparation he neglected homework as planned and helped me reorganize our room to get ready for Baby. We have really maximized our tiny space... the floor-to-ceiling drawers below illustrate our creativity.

We've discovered that we aren't the best picture-takers, so Aaron has been getting frustrated that he doesn't have any pictures of his pregnant wife. The photos below part of his resultant explosion of photo-taking. If you'd rather not see my large exposed belly I'd suggest skipping these or at least not clicking to enlarge them! :) These lovely post-work out shots also illustrate what my shirt often looks like after eating these days... messy! Either I'm getting more wreckless and spacey or my belly is really getting in the way.

The Best Two Years....

Today is Aaron and I's 2 year anniversary. We went on a date on Friday night and ate yummy Thai food and saw a very romantic movie... "Transformers". Okay, so it's not romantic, but since "Becoming Jane" was sold out we decided to go for it. Aaron loved it and I can't say quite the same for me, but it made me happy that he really liked it. Today we drove the beautiful Alpine Loop (see picture below) that connects Provo Canyon to American Fork Canyon. The leaves are all changing colors and falling and it was gorgeous!



I am thankful this year to have a husband who always puts me first and whose always positive attitude is contagious... even when he's crazy busy, exhausted and probably should be really grumpy. He is such an example to me in his dedication to so many things - me, school, his calling, our future. He simply amazes me. The thing I'm probably most grateful for, though, is his fun personality and zest for life. The Lord knew I needed someone to mellow me out and make me enjoy life instead of stressing out all the time and Aaron is constantly teaching me how to do that. I just love him and I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful best friend and companion. Happy Aniversary, Aaron!

Our Wiggle Worm

I keep getting people asking why we haven't updated our blog in a while, so here's the update! No pictures with this post, but check out the "Britt's Belly" feature on the left for the most recent shot.

Our most fun news recently is 2 part. Part 1: Aaron started the Accounting Junior Core. So far it has involved late nights (10:30ish most nights), early mornings (4 or 5), rushing out the door for a frantic ride to class on his bike, lots of recruiting events and a few naps in the library during LONG study days. For me this has meant lots of time to run errands and get a few things done (I'm being optimistic - I'm really missing Aaron). But we hear the 1st month is the worst - and we're already half way through that!

Part 2: Baby Girl Wilk is getting more and more wiggly all the time! She found a new fun game to play with her dad a few nights ago - Aaron pokes her and she kicks back! Aaron also pinned her between his hands until she realized she was pinned and jerked away. I've never seen Aaron's face more excited and more in love with anything. She's got him wrapped around her finger already. We're having fun being pre-parents! Her nickname of choice is still "Shark Bait", which will probably stick unless it makes us look like really abusive parents - we'll see!

It's a GIRL!!!!!!!!

So, Aaron was right... our cute little shrimp is a girl! And we have the pictures to prove it! The ultrasound technician called it a "text book" shot - there's no way it's not a girl! (For those of you familiar with ultrasound shots, she has the 3 characteristic lines that denote female anatomy.)

When the ultrasound first started she was all curled up in a ball, wiggly as can be... wiggling so much in fact that it took a while to spread her out and get her to hold still long enough to get a good shot of certain things. She's perfect (as far as the normal checks for birth defects go) and we just think she's perfect otherwise as well!

She seems to be quite the acrobat - she wakes up every night at about 8:30 and does such big somersaults that Aaron can feel them. The ultrasound pictures show it too. All of her profile shots include her leg and foot - which were conveniently placed right above her head the entire time!

For those of you who can appreciate the implications of what it means to have "Wimmer Ears" I think this picture below may be our first proof of her mother's highly dominant ear genes. :)

Other than all of the dorky stuff I thought was cool like seeing all 4 chambers of her heart beating, the different parts of her brain and her spine in sections (because she was still curled up in a ball), it was also really cool to see her little fingers and toes move and her mouth open and shut. So cool! We just can't believe she's really there and that we'll get to hold her and love her so soon. We can't wait!

Climbing and Pickle Juice

We went to our favorite climbing area yesterday - Maple Canyon, which we fondly refer to as "the place we fell in love" - and Aaron was pleasantly surprised to find his wife more daring than he thought she'd be already half way through her pregnancy. It was just a fun, easy climbing day, but we enjoyed just being outside together and having a Saturday with no other comittments but playing with each other - a rarity as of late.

I add this picture for two reasons - 1 - you can see my little belly getting bigger and 2 - Aaron wanted to make sure the whole world knew I was drinking pickle juice at the cragg - something he figured every pregnant woman should do but was cracking up when I actually wanted to. We brought some pickles with us (which have been tasting surprisingly delicious lately) and I drank the juice when they were all gone! I think Aaron took 5 pictures of me and the pickle juice. He thought it was totally hilarious for some reason! :)

Growing...

In our first ultra sound our little baby looked like nothing more than a jelly bean - so it is so fun to see an actual baby in my belly now! This is her at about 10 1/2 weeks. Aaron and I cracked up to see her just relaxing, flat on her back, mellow as can be. When I was telling my co-workers about it they joked that if she was that relaxed she must have gotten lots of Aaron's genes and not very many of mine! :( The little head is on the left and on the right you can see her little foot in the air. I'm actually a few days ahead of where they thought I was, so they bumped my due date up to December 27th - just 2 days after Christmas and only 1 day after my birthday. It will be a crazy week for us, but I feel just as bad for our ultra-supportive families whose holidays will be interrupted as well. I'm looking forward to being almost done with the nausea - probably only a few more weeks! Yahoo!

Since this was our first normal doctor's appointment, we had some questions for the doctor. I laughed when I realized they all had to do with rock climbing, backpacking, hiking, etc. I was happy to hear that Aaron, dad and I's August backpacking adventure will not have to be cancelled, just modified so I'm only carrying a day pack (10 lbs or less). That sounded great to me - the heavy pack is the only thing I don't really like about backpacking. I've turned Aaron into a pack mule to practice already - he carries most of our climbing gear up the canyon a few times a week. :) Good thing he loves me!

Announcement!!!

I'm pregnant!! Above is Baby Wilk's first picture at about 6 weeks, but I'm about 9 weeks now. (For those of you experienced moms saying - "Why'd she get an ultra sound at 6 weeks?" - it's a long story... call me sometime and I'll tell you!) I'm due December 30 so my future accountant husband (and me too) is requesting all of your prayers for a 2007 baby because we'll get a bigger tax return! All is well so far with the pregnancy. I've felt really good except for some nausea... which actually almost disappeared last week so we're hoping that is not a fleeting trend.

Despite the myth that "all men want boys first", Aaron is dying for a little girl and says he's positive it is one. He now refers to my belly as "she" and it is contagious because I'm calling it she now as well. Only time will tell, but boy or girl I want the baby to look just like it's daddy... see my favorite baby picture of Aaron below. Sooo cute!