Baby shower - Brownsville

This weekend Toni and I made a trip to Brownsville for a baby shower that was thrown by her family. I'd like to thank Nena for doing such a good job setting it up and to everyone else who helped with setup and making it an enjoyable experience for everyone. We are extremely grateful to everyone who came and helped welcome Caitlin into the family a couple months early. :) Today marks 60 days until the due date and it's definitely starting to feel real now. I think seeing last weeks pictures and now starting to setup baby furniture and strollers is starting to make it seem real. We're both extremely excited. I seriously can't see how Toni can hold Caitlin for another 60 days though! My guess is that Caitlin will arrive around 7/10 and not the 7/26 due date. If anyone would like to throw their guess out there, feel free to add your guess in the comments section at the bottom of this post. :)
We came back from Brownsville on Sunday and spent Monday celebrating my sister Sarah's birthday - the big 33! Toni is now in Washington DC for work and won't be returning until Saturday. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go with her. The flights were booked solid. I'll probably spend this time doing what I've been doing since being laid off - looking for a job, exercising and doing stuff around the house. Today I went to the bookstore and bought a book to start studying for the Post Office exam. I'm really not sure if I want to stay in the IT field or not and would like to at least look into something new. I'm still spending time sharpening my IT skills as well though, I'm almost done reading the first of 2 books that I have for the Security+ certification and today I stopped by Half Price Books and got a couple of books on Linux and Active Directory for dirt cheap that I'll start reading soon as well.
Next week Toni has another appointment with her normal doctor where we'll talk about the insulin and her sugar levels. Then the following weekend (6/7) we have our mandatory 9 hour hospital tour/birthing class at the hospital.

Amazing

I wish I had a better title for this week's post but after this week's appointments, the only word that came to mind was "amazing". This morning marks week #31 in the pregnancy and we marked the occasion with another sonogram. This time, the technician had us in a room that just happened to have a 3D sonogram machine and since Caitlin was in the ideal position, she took a few snapshots for us. As you can see from the pictures, it's amazing. Caitlin looks beautiful and everything looked and sounded perfect. She's tipping the scales at 4 pounds, 1 ounce which is right on track for this point in the pregnancy. Some of the sonograms showed that Caitlin even has hair on her head already! They found no problems and no abnormalities so we were both extremely happy with today's news. And the good news didn't stop there! The problem with the placenta is gone so there's no risk for delivery now!

Toni also had an appointment on Tuesday with the normal Doctor and it was decided that since her sugar levels seem to be escalating to the point where diet alone can't keep them in check, that she'll need to go back on insulin for the rest of the pregnancy. The good news is, she's on an extremely low dosage of slow acting insulin which only needs to be given once a day, right before going to bed. So far, Toni says that the insulin is making her feel physically better so that's a good thing as well.

So with the good news all around, Toni is now officially cleared to go to Washington DC next week. We're not sure if I'll be able to go as well since the flights are booked solid but we'll see what happens. Tomorrow we are heading to Brownsville for a baby shower down there and then we are coming back on Sunday so we can be here on Monday for a cookout for my sister Sarah's birthday.

The Baby Shower

First, I'd like the thank Karen Laubert for putting together an incredible baby shower. Toni and I are extremely grateful to everyone who came and to everyone who was unable to but still took the time to send gifts, money and their congratulations with Karen. We were very touched by how many of you contributed to Caitlin's gift fund. The money will go to good use on getting everything we will need as we start into parenthood.

I'd like to take a moment to talk directly to my old co-workers. I can definitely say that I have worked with some of the nicest people I will probably ever meet. I will miss working along side you. I have received many phone calls to see how I'm doing and I appreciate the concern. While I was not expecting to be unemployed right now, life goes on. I've watched this same thing happen to many good friends before and luckily was prepared for it should it ever happen to me. If there's one thing I've learned from them, it's that there's definitely something else better out there for me. As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I have never and will never be defined by my job. My family is the most important part of my life and I have a feeling that 20 years from now when Caitlin is grown and we're looking back at this blog, losing my job will be little more than a footnote to 2008. There are far greater things that will happen to me this year and while losing my job isn't a good thing, it's definitely not the most important thing. I have my health, a beautiful wife, a happy marriage and baby girl on the way. My life is truly blessed. I was looking for a job when I found that one, and I'll find something again. I hope to keep in touch with all of you and I hope you will continue to follow the rest of the pregnancy and our lives after Caitlin arrives through this website. I try to keep it updated at least a couple times a month so that friends and family both near and far can keep track of what's going on.

This Thursday, Toni has another sonogram which we're both anxious about. At this sonogram we'll find out if Toni is cleared to travel the following week and probably get a better idea about whether or not a C-section will be required to deliver Caitlin. As for the travel, Toni is going to a conference in Washington DC so with my newfound freedom, I'm going to use some of her frequent flier miles to tag along. We'll be up there for almost a week so we might try to see some of the sites. We were last up there 6 years ago and saw everything but the Jefferson Memorial so maybe this time we can check that out. While she's at the conference, I'll probably do a little exploring, work out, and surf the web to see what kind of jobs I can find back in San Antonio. If any of you hear of any jobs you think I might be qualified for, let me know. :)

Again, thank you to everyone. I hope to talk to you all very soon. You can contact me through either email or phone:

davidvargas1@yahoo.com
363-6442

Happy Mother's Day!

Today we spent the day here at the house and celebrated Mother's Day here with a cookout. Mom and Bob came over and my sister Sarah, her boyfriend Mark, and his 2 kids Macy and McKenna came over and we had a nice lunch to celebrate. It's hard to believe but this will be the last Mother's Day that Toni won't be a mom. :) Everything with Toni and Caitlin is going good. Caitlin is still extremely active and Toni is getting bigger by the day. I still can't figure out how Caitlin actually fits inside her stomach! We're going to try to go get pictures taken in the next week or 2 so we can have professional pictures of us together while Toni is pregnant. She really looks very cute pregnant so it'll be nice to have pictures to look back on. :)

I'm going to keep it short today but don't forget we have our San Antonio Baby Shower next Saturday. Here's the invitation for anyone who I haven't gotten one to. Hope to see you there!

5 Years and counting....

This weekend Toni and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary! Saturday we went downtown to the Gunther House for breakfast and then later in the afternoon we went to Shogun for an early dinner. Other than that, we spent the weekend at the house. We got the ceiling fan put up in Caitlin's room and I got the crown molding installed and painted in the guest bedroom. We also put a couple of new lights up on the outside of the house. Over the next week, I'll be on house arrest (on-call) so I'm going to do the window trim in the guest bedroom and then get started on the guest bathroom. We got some light blue paint at Lowe's from their $5 bin and will need 2 more pieces of crown molding to complete the bathroom. It should be a pretty quick project. I'd like to get the remainder of the upstairs painted and trimmed before Caitlin is born but I'm not sure that's going to happen. We'll see...
Week 28 is going pretty well in the pregnancy. Toni is really starting to show and Caitlin has really been active lately. We should have a couple of slow weeks and then another sonogram on May 22nd.