Corny Charlie :)

Thought this was humerous... Charlie's growth is compared to the length of an ear of corn, read more below:

Copied from Babycenter.com... How your baby's growing:"Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts him at just over a pound. Since he's almost a foot long (picture an ear of corn), he cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon start to plump up. His brain is also growing quickly now, and his taste buds are continuing to develop. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help his air sacs inflate once he hits the outside world. His skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon."


And to think that we bought some ears of corn at Target this week for $0.10 each!! Carson and I love to eat grilled corn on the cob in the summer, especially if it has some melted spicy blue cheese butter on it!! (Carson's homemade recipe) But obviously our little ear-of-corn Charlie worth more than 10 cents, he's is priceless!!! :) We get more and more excited about our little Charlie everyday. He's a wild man this week flopping and moving around in there... guess he's a very flexible ear of corn!

He has a name!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry, the wait is over! Carson and I have decided on a name.... Charles Stewart Anderson!!! We're going to call him Charlie though. After referring to our little son as "Baby Charlie" for few weeks now... Charlie is stickin'! :) When I looked it up, Charles means "manly or well loved" so we thought that was cute but we originally chose it just because we loved it. Then we found out that Carson's great grandfather was named "Charlie" so it was for sure!! We decided on Stewart because it's Carson's middle name. So.... he will have the same initials as Carson which we are both think is very fun!! Now we just have to physically get ready for CHARLIE'S arrival! YEAH!!!!!!!!!! Carson and I get more excited everyday about our son.

Yes, this picture is real! We saw a friend from church while we were in Babies-R-Us and she just laughed at the scene of the 3 (actually 5) of us together and insisted that she take our picture. Pictured is my sweet friend, Ashley, who is obviously pregnant (due 6 weeks before me) and her sweet little 1 year old, Mac. She went with me to the store to help me register for Charlie. I was tired after a day of clinical and visiting the doctor so I opted for the wheelchair. Even though I'm holding the scanner in the picture, with the basket locking me in, Ashley pretty much scanned everything for me! To keep Mac occupied we fed him some little Gerber treats and he ate half of the whole bottle! He was a such a trooper! I think we were able to pretty much register for everything though so that was good. We had some items in my basket but all I ended up purchasing was the already eaten Gerber snacks and some belly butter... fill up Mac's belly and keep mine from not stretching out too much! :) Needless to say, I came home and crashed.

Yes, we went to the doctor again and were able to hear Charlie's little heart beat and hear him moving around in there which is always a treat! Carson is definitely not missing anything on this pregnancy... my personal driver hasn't missed an appointment yet. She said everything is great and next time I go early to have "dreaded" glucose test. Well, at least everyone says it's nasty but if you know me... the words "too sweet" have never come out of my mouth! Let's just pray all my sugar eating habits over the past 20 something years and 24 weeks of pregnancy haven't hurt me.

The only thing that my doctor was not happy to hear was that I've "slipped" a few times on my crutches. Only 2 times where I actually ended up on the ground. Once in Marshall, I landed slowly on my bottom outside because the ground was wet after it rained... and last week when I slipped again in the bathroom at clinical. Now picture this: Just washed my hands and about to walk out when... my left crutch slowly moved away from my side. I put a little (I stress little) weight on my "broken leg" (protected by the boot) and then plop on my left knee and then my bottom and then... here's the worst and most embarrassing part... I hit the side of my head on the tile wall!!!!!!!!!!!!! I sat there for a second looking at how ridiculous I must have looked. Good thing I was alone in there because I looked quite silly doing all of this in a dress! Well, I knew the baby and the leg were fine, but I took a Tylenol just in case my head started to hurt and went on about my day. Everything WAS fine. My OB pointed out that my stubbornness could possibly be a problem with my need to slow down. Wow, she's good! I like to use the word "persistent" but yes, I need to slow down. Don't worry that was my only "slip" and I plan to be more careful! I can spot a drop of water on the floor now a mile away :)

Charlie has reassured me that he's safe and doing very well in his little home of my belly because he's tossing, turning, flipping. and kicking quite a lot!!!! I noticed that he kicks more when one of my preceptor for clinical talks a lot... so I think he has a crush on her. If she's telling a story or talking to a patient, he starts kicking my left side like crazy!! It's very cute and exciting to feel him move so much. Carson has only felt him once, but I'm sure it will soon many more times VERY soon.

Poling Cousins Reunion 2009

Last weekend we drove to Amarillo for a reunion with Carson's cousins, aunts, uncles, etc at his grandfather's ranch (He's in the middle with the blue shirt). Kinda like "Where's Waldo?" you can play "Where's the crutches?" :) Pretty easy to spot. We had a great time with everyone and yes, we're honestly in the panhandle and that is rain in the background!!

Here's the old sign that the men took town. Some crazy person drove by one night a couple years ago and ruined the old sign with a shotgun. We all pitched in for Father's Day and bought his grandfather, Walt, a new shiny one!

Wait, is this that show "Man vs. Wild" on The Discovery Channel.... nope, just Carson being silly! Carson does need some meat on his bones though because we now officially weigh the same amount. Maybe grasshoppers will help him put on some pounds with me??

Even though I was on crutches, it didn't hold me back from having fun. We even had a fun girls' night on Friday while the boys when to shoot guns (see below). Thanks to Wendy (Carson's cousin's wife) and Carson's mom, Wendy, we packed it up and went to Jo-Ann's fabric store!!!!!! You know good and well that for the past 9 weeks of me being on crutches, Carson would not take me there. So the Wendy's, her two little girls, and myself were able to have some good girl time and craft shop! Again, I rode in the wheelchair and didn't care how sore and tired my arms were... because it was worth it! Thanks Wendy and Wendy for a fun night!!

You're probably asking yourself, "why did you post this Jules?" Well, this is Carson shooting some big fancy gun that weekend that: made him feel really cool... more like a man... raised his testosterone... etc.... so I thought I'd post a picture from "one of the coolest days of his life!" Actually, it really was neat to hear about. They shot at these huge 200 lbs rocks that when the bullet hit the rock, it would just turn them into pebbles. That's pretty powerful!! Carson was happy, so... I'm happy! :)

Picture update!!

Here is another pic I found from Mother's day that was too cute not to post.
This was from my cousin, Brian's, wedding reception in Marshall back in May. I was about 19 wks prego here!
With my two beautiful cousins, Jessica and Jennalee. The only girls on this side of the family are the 3 of us and their little sister, Janae. Love them!!
Here with my big brother, Joshua. It was so great to see him and his wife, Laura (below).

I love this picture that Carson took while fishing with my dad in Dulac, LA with my dad. Carson said this was the name of a fishing camp down there... they funny thing was the house was barely standing on it's stilts. He said it was pretty "amazing" that it was still standing up after all those hurricanes down there.
Here we are with Andrew (Carson's youngest brother) right before his high school graduation from Tivy High School in Kerrville. We took pics at their parents' house because we knew it would be impossible for me to try and get down on the field after the ceremony to take family pictures. We made it to graduation for the intro, speeches, and to see Andrew walk across the stage. I was still in some pain at that time so Carson and Justus pushed me into the stadium in a wheelchair!! Yes, I'm serious! Prego girl in a wheelchair.
Brothers

I was super excited to have a girls' night with the ladies from our Bible study. We went out to eat yummy Mexican food. This picture I'm here with Jayme, Ashley & Cameron (prego).
Other side of the table is: Katie, Debbie & Ash (all 3 are prego!) All 6 of these sweet ladies have been prayer warriors for Carson and I over the past few years and I don't know what I'd do without them. (Esther missed you not being there!!... she's prego too. We have LOTS of babies in the mix!!)


One more picture of us from Andrew's graduation.
Our friend, Esther Cowan, had her 30th birthday celebration earlier this month! Since she was born in 1979 they had a 70's themed bash! Here are two of my sweet friends, Whitney & Megan.
Here I am with Sarabeth!! Anyone recognize that top from back in my Pine Cove days?!?!
Emily and Grace... I loved that Grace's outfit was actually her mom's from the 70's! It was such a fun time!!

Carson has just been busy taking me to clinicals every week day (yes I'm doing about 36-40 hours of clinicals for school every week on crutches!!!) It's humerous to see the patients' expressions when I walk in... and then especially when I tell them I'm pregnant!! Carson has a few interviews set up in the next few weeks so please keep praying for him. Looks like we need to bump that prayer request back to July for him to have a job. His job for now is taking care of me. He's been getting a lot done around the house too so that's helpful. Keep the prayers coming for him though!!!!!!!!

I went to the doctor about 2 weeks ago for xrays and he said to still not put any weight on it. I go back again July 15th for more xrays and there is a chance I can walk on it then, but "probably not" were his words. Frustrating, but I know it will be worth it.

I'm 23 weeks pregnant this week and can really feel him moving around in my belly... especially after I eat! Carson is jealous because he hasn't felt or seen him move yet. I'll post some more pics this week from our trip to Amarillo last weekend so you can see my big belly! He's making me look more "round' than prego because he's laying sideways. It's kinda funny cause I look a little square! We ordered a crib and dresser last week so I when the nursery starts coming together I'll post some pics. I better get back to clinical... I just typed this on my lunch break!

It's a boy!!!!!

Well, sorry for the delay in posting!  We've had lots going on....

First is we found out on Thursday, May 21st that we're having a baby boy!!!!!!  We weren't supposed to find out until this week, but the sonographer hooked us up last week.  I went to the doctor because I was having some SERIOUS upper abdominal pain... they did a sono of my stomach, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, etc.  Thankfully everything looked OK, so it was probably a horrible stomach bug combined with my body reacting to coming off the Vicodin too quick.  After he was done, we asked if he could tell us the sex of our baby a week early... he said "Sure!"  Our son's legs were WAY up by his head and he was showing off his package!  :)  So needless to say, it was obvious!  My motherly instincts were correct.  YES!!!!!  By the way, he's a very active little child.  I have felt some serious kicking this past week and love feeling it everytime!  (and some hard core indigestion too... little stinker!)

Name for our little boy.... we are about 99% sure of our name, but Carson is hesitant to tell everyone yet.  He keeps saying "he will have that name forever.... what if he doesn't like it.... its a lot of pressure to give him a name.... are we sure that's what we like..."  and on and on.  Well, I love the name we've picked, but when he says it's ok, I'll tell everyone on this blog and Facebook.  Until, just wait patiently like I am.  :)

Of course, after we told our families and close friends... I started looking online for fun baby boy stuff!  Haven't decided on anything yet but definitely getting some ideas.  I found a crib with my mom in Longview that I really like, so I'll talk to Carson more when he gets back from fishing with my dad on the Louisiana coast.  Haven't found bedding I like so I'm leaning towards my mom and I making it.  We'll see.  

I've been in Marshall since Friday spending some wonderful, much needed time with my mom.  I also loved having my cousin's wife, Cara, and their daughter, Madeline, and my niece, Ava stay with us for the past few days... loved the girl time!  We even went to see Carson's grandparents in Carthage for a nice lunch and to tell them that we're having a boy.  My mom has been babysitting me for the past few days and doing a great job!!  

Carson is coming to get me tomorrow, stay Wednesday night in FW, go to the doctor Thursday morning, then off to Kerrville for Andrew's graduation.  Last high school graduation for Carson's parents!!!!!  I'm really excited to visit the fam in the hill country.  I have some cute pictures from the past few weeks, but Carson has the camera with him in Louisiana so I'll post later.

Many of you have been asking about my ol' right leg.  Well, I still don't have a "name" for that rod in my leg.  Any suggestions?  It's ok.  Not great, but better everyday.  I still have pain when it's not at least waist level, but if it's up it doesn't hurt too bad.  I'm able to get around slowly, if someone else drives me, and hobble around on my crutches.  Good thing my belly isn't too big right now!  :)  Only 5-6 more weeks hopefully...

Last bit of good news actually happened a couple weeks ago!  I accepted a pediatric nurse practitioner job to start after I graduate.  I'm so excited!!!!  I will start after I pass my national exams, so that will be September at the earliest or January after my maternity leave.  The new job will unfortunately not be in the oncology department where I've been for 4 years... but it's still at Cook Children's in the pre-operative department.  I know it's going to be a great first job as a PNP, assessing kids before scheduled surgeries.    One prayer is answered.... now just keep Carson in your prayers.  He's still looking for a job, but we have faith that the Lord has something in store for him in the near future.  My prayer, if you so wish to join me... is for Carson to find a job by the end of June!  I'm praying expectingly for Carson to have a job by then!  We have lots of people praying for us and know that the Lord hears us.  So, we double-dog-dare you to join us in that prayer!?!?!?!?

Happy Mother's Day!!!

First off, Happy late Mother's day to all of those mommies out there!! (even expecting ones like me!!) We are getting more and more excited everyday for our little guy to come! Carson is so cute about always kissing my belly, talking to the baby and singing his silly songs that he makes up on a whim... that's what I love about him! I'm constantly reminded about what a wonderful father he will be! My friend brought by this cute little cake last week in celebration of our first Mother's day!!! YEAH for mommyhood!!
We had a wonderful and lazy weekend with our friends, the Henrys. They drove up from Houston and, of course, brought their handsome little son Blake with them for us to love on!! This is a pic of the Henry family...
Nathan is one of Carson's oldest friends and they even went to Tech together so they're already planning the college football games they will take their children to! We didn't do much all weekend except hang out, laugh a lot, watch movies, play board games and EAT! :) Here's me lovin'on that sweet little boy...
So you can see why I gave this little guy lots and lots of sugar over the weekend.
Obviously, we wore him out!
After lots of fun together over the weekend, Ashley and I woke up Sunday morning to a scrumptious and beautifully prepared Mother's Day homemade breakfast! We enjoyed every bite and then decided, humm... our men sure set the bar high for next year!! :) Wouldn't you want to eat this French toast, ommlette, & fruit when you woke up??? You can be jealous because it was goooooooood!!! (the ommelette had thyme and basil from our garden too)
Well, I'm still needing daily pain med control but taking about half the dose that I was last week. I've been dying to get out of the house so we made it to church Sunday night where I took up 3 seats... one for myself and two for my leg! :) But it was great to be back in our community of believers. Then again today (Tuesday) I was eager to get out of the house again... so I hobbled into Target and yes, I rode one of those motorized shopping carts around Target. (Landon, you can laugh at me... because I laughed at myself!) It was thankfully a short trip, because my leg was starting to hurt. But anyone who knows me is aware that Target is one of my addictions!! Loved it! Then my sweet friend Katie called on the way home and brought me some Curly's Frozen Custard. If anyone visits us in FW, we'll likely take you to Curly's because we love it! It's been a great week so far and I have pretty good energy... it just takes me awhile to move around and I often have to stop and put my leg up to ease the pain.
If anyone knows of some good places to find cute baby bedding online, email me cause I've had some more time on my hands recently to surf the internet. And you know that nursery is going to be cute if I have anything to do with it!! :)

Oh- one more bit of good news is my best friend from high school, Kendall Toon, just got engaged about a week and half ago too! I'm so excited for her and wanted to share the good news with everyone who knows her. Here is a picture of the FUTURE Mr. and Mrs. Zach Kent! (How cute will her name be??? Kendall Kent! Love it!)
I visit the ortho dr again tomorrow to see if I can get my stitches out! I sure hope so...
I'll keep everyone posted!

Resting up and eating too much...

First off, sorry if this post is boring. Obviously I haven't moved much except from the couch, the chair, the shower, and our bed... so I've taken a lot of pictures with my cell phone in between visitors to pass some time. I had to entertain myself somehow!!

Well, I've been holding off on the nasty picture but had too many requests for it from all my nursing friends, so sorry if it grosses you out. Here's my leg right after surgery. I only have a few incisions, but all the extra spots you see above the stitches around my ankle are "poke-holes" from where they used these gripper things to hold the bones during surgery.... with lots of bruising as you can obviously see. That yellow thing is just a dressing with ointment on it. But the good thing is that when it heals I should have minimal scarring.
Here is what I looked like for about 7 days after I got home from the hospital. I look pretty raggedy, but looking better now. That tubing to my leg is an "Ice-Man" which flushed ice cold water around my leg in this cool ice pack thing. I used it for about a week and I'm starting to feel better and haven't used it as much. (Thanks Cara for telling me about it) Please excuse all the mess. The basket was a really great gift from my brother and sister-in-law full of book and cute baby stuff, and I'm using it now as a basket to hold all the daily stuff I need. Thanks Laura!!
When I actually got up and went to the bathroom, this is what I came back to (beer in hand)...
Over the past two weeks I've received lots of beautiful flowers. This is a picture of the ones from our best friends Jeffrey and Allison that I got in the hospital.
And ones that the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner school sent me...
So Wednesday I went to the doctor and he said everything is looking great so far. They took off the brace and said to still keep it elevated as much as possible so the swelling would stay down and not stretch out the stitches. That's fine with me cause it throbs after hanging down for only 30 seconds. Here's some pictures I took of the x-rays that show off my new appliances! I was wrong... only 4 screws, not 5!! But as you can tell, they're pretty BIG screws...
The fibula break (smaller bone on the left) wasn't repaired because it will heal itself. Most of the time that doesn't hurt. It's only every once and awhile I move a certain way and it does. The orthopedic dr put me in a walking boot, which I love because I can open it a few times a day to work my ankle and most importantly scratch my leg!!!! After we got home from the doctor I got this awesome fruit bouquet from our friends, the Ozaetas.
And I could not believe the balloon that came with it! I laughed so hard because this little ducky on the balloon broke his right leg too! So YES I seriously took a picture of the cute balloon...
Then that night a HUMONGOUS surprise came. The wonderful, sweet girls that I work with brought me an abundance of food and this huge basket of goodies. I started crying when I read the card from all of the girls who were so generous and thoughtful. That was some seriously good pot roast, chocolate cake, brownies and chicken salad!! This is me excited about my basket (with my new large black boot in front)...
They also brought me these beautiful tulips too!!
Even after receiving all of these wonderful gifts of food and flowers, but sweet husband went out and bought me some more of my favorite flowers, hydrangeas!
I've been very, very spoiled over the past 2 weeks and wanted to say thank you to everyone! One last thing, we went to the OB yesterday and heard the heart rate again. Everything was sounded great! It was really cool because we could also hear our little one "kicking" the Doppler machine!! It made me smile to know that he/she is still ok after the surgery and everything that's been going on.
Thanks again for all the prayers too. Good news, I finished my last final this morning!! It took me awhile to complete it since I was kinda in pain, but it's done!!!!!!! Yippee!! One more thing down and hopefully will be able to start my clinicals in the near future. Off to enjoy our friends, the Henrys, who is here for the weekend! I'll post some pics next week of us with their cute little boy, Blake.

Home and resting...

Hello from our yellow couch! Well, surgery went well on Thursday. It lasted about an hour and twenty minutes. They did a Doppler on the baby before and after the surgery, both were great! My mom has the picture on her phone of what my leg looked like afterwards, so if everyone isn't too grossed out I'll post it later. It's really not that bad, just about a one inch incision at the top and at the bottom and few other small ones where they put the screws in. Oh- and during the surgery they discovered that apparently I broke my ankle too!! A piece of my inner ankle bone had broken off, so they screwed it back on. I now own a titanium rod (full length of my lower leg) and 5 screws. To answer your question, they will stay in there forever. The nurses at Harris in pre-op, post-op and in-patient were all SUPER nice! My dad stayed until about 5pm on Thursday, Carson's dad stopped by and my mom is in town until Wednesday. WOW! She has been a HUGE help around the house, with me, and given Carson a break to get some of his "stuff" done. Carson stayed with me at the hospital on Thursday night... poor thing, I woke him up needing help about every hour and a half. Thankfully since I was able to use my crutches "properly" and able to control my pain on just hydrocodone, they let me come home Friday afternoon.

I'm sleeping more and more throughout the night... not usually more than 5 hours at a time because I wake up in pain. I've tried to be tough and not take as much medicine or take it less often, but I usually end up in pain and go back to the same routine. Besides pain medicine, my other two favortite meds are: food/sweets and visitors!!! I really get some serious spurts of energy and forget about the pain when people come to see me. So thanks to everyone who has already come or is coming in the near future... I LOVE IT!!!!!!! :)

I've had some crazy dreams since this happened since I'm doing my fair share of sleeping these days. But I've have quite a few consistency in some of the dreams... and that is dreams that our little one is a BOY! We'll have to wait of course to find out, but who knows... my mother's intuition may be right! We go to the OB doctor and the ortho doctor both on Thursday just for check-ups and I'll keep you posted on what they both say.

I cannot even express how much your sweet thoughts, prayers, and words of encouragement have meant during this time for our family. We're so grateful and appreciate them more than you can imagine. Carson and I are truly blessed. Speaking of.... he had a great interview last week, no word yet and another one tomorrow with someone else. We'll keep you posted on that too. Until then... I'll still be here on the couch if you want to call and stop by, I'd love to see you!