The Quirkiness of Casey

A few things you might not have know about the comedian, Casey.

He likes to kiss farm animals:

In Hico.

And at the State Fair.

He's not afraid to show his feminine side:

In Paris.

In Urban Outfitters.

At the OBGYN, while I beg him to get off the table before the Dr. comes!

At Northpark.

At the Rodin Museum in Paris.

Even in Kroger.

He likes hamburgers:Lots.

And, if you couldn't already tell, he's not the least bit shy. We saw these Jersey Shore guido wanna-be's at Tony's on Friday, and Casey asked to have his picture with them.
Note her stomach tattoos. Sadly, her hair hid her prominently displayed ta-ta's. But their fake tans show in gleaming contrast to Casey's white shirt and guido pout.

All these pictures were posted not only with Casey's consent but with his insistence.

Childbirth

Yesterday, we hired a doula, aka a labor and delivery coach. She is also a L&D nurse. We met her when she taught our 2nd childbirth class. Casey and I both really liked her perspective and outlook on the whole process and decided to hire her. Women who have doulas generally have shorter labors, less need for pain medicine or other medical interventions, and I think that's the way we want to go.

The whole time I've been pregnant, I've been on the fence of the Natural vs Medicated philosophies. There are die-hards in both camps among my friends and co-workers. I am certainly no childbirth snob, but I don't want to have to have a c-section if I can avoid it. It's major surgery, and if it's not absolutely necessary, why would I have surgery to do something my body is built to do on it's own? Seems perverse.

The more I read, the clearer it becomes that medical intervention can become a slippery slope. If you get an epidural, it can slow or even stop the labor. It can also lower the baby's heart rate, so you have to have wear a constant heart rate monitor. If the epidural slows down the labor, they might want to give you pitocin to speed along the contractions. Of course, this can put the baby under distress with increasingly strong, fast (and painful!) contractions, and if his heart rate lowers because of the epidural or the distress, which they will be watching for now that you're constantly monitored, so you might have to have a c-section. Or if your labor doesn't progress once you've been given with the pictocin, you might have to have a c-section. And I don't want to be pressured into surgery when the baby and I were perfectly healthy to begin with.

And even if you don't get into a critical situation, you're numb from the waist down, stuck in a bed for an undetermined amount of time...and I've never liked being immobile. I pace around my classroom the entire time I'm teaching, even now 37 1/2 weeks pregnant. And needles are creepy. And the epidural can have nasty side effects.

Of course, the side effect of no medicine is pain. And...I might not be able to handle it. Running the marathon was painful, and took a lot of encouragement from Casey for me to be able to do it, but that was 4 1/2 hours. This will probably be more like 18 hours.

I'm going to give it a try, and we'll see how it goes.

Side note/a bit of a Rant:
Pregnancy books warn you that you will be assailed with mothers, even strangers, telling you the war stories of their labors. This has not been a problem for me. But a certain segment of the population, the "just you wait" people are really getting on my nerves. "Just you wait"...it's going to be so hard, you're going to be so tired, "just you wait" until they're older, they're so much a bigger pain, blah, blah, blah. And usually each one of these Negative Nancies has not one, but many, negative predictions about how horrible my life is going to be once we have the baby.

Seriously people, I appreciate your "kind" intentions of preparing me for the worst...but take your negative mojo elsewhere. We didn't decide to have a baby because he'd be fun and cute. We want to be parents, to watch this little person that's half Casey, half Virginie and help shape him and watch him grow into the man God has him to be. It'll be work. I know that. Everything that is worthwhile in life is work. Bring it on. But don't rain on my parade, folks. I think a grand total of one person has spent time telling me how wonderful motherhood and how rewarding it is. Thank you, Brenda Monk.

A weekend in Hico, Tx

For Spring Break, our travel was limited to one weekend at a Bed and Breakfast in Hico, Tx about an hour outside of Ft. Worth. My parents came too. Hico is famous for their Annual Steak Cookoff and possibly being the death place of Billy the Kid. The only steak we had was chicken-fried and Billy the Kid was nowhere to be seen. But there were horses!
In a field next to the B&B there were seven horses, and thankfully, the lady who owned them didn't mind that my dad and Casey climbed over the fence to pet them. We fed them lots of carrots, and the horses certainly didn't mind.

Casey gets a horsey hug.
All weekend, dad attempted to ride one, and finally did. It took a lot of carrots.
Each day we had breakfast at the best restaurant in town, the Koffee Kup, just edging out Beans & Taters as our favorite, which despite the goofy name and the fact that they didn't have a commercial kitchen and no less than 9 crock pots in their kitchen, made a great chicken fried steak. Gravy was served as a condiment at almost every meal at three different restaurants.

It's fun to get out of Dallas sometimes. :-)

And as an added bonus, in a neighboring town, Dublin, they were having their St. Pat's day celebration (one of the 3 largest in the state!) so we had to go.
We are not Irish, not remotely. But I think Casey was rather dapper in the hat. Dad gave the 8 year old next to us some competition grabbing up the candy the floats riders were tossing out.

Apparently in Dublin, St. Pat's is cause for many, many pageants because there were at least 10 floats like this one. I think it was one of those "we're all winners" kind of thing, considering the sheer volume of girls on floats in dresses (well a few in jeans) with crowns and sashes. If there was a pregnant girl category, I definitely would have won.

Dublin is also famous for still producing the original recipe Dr. Pepper. Cane sugar only.
I am no Dr. Pepper connoisseur, but this is my kind of float. I'd be the queen of Blue Bell and Dr. Pepper any day.

The only part of the weekend I didn't throughly enjoy was the drive there and back. Casey has a serious lead foot, and I warned him if he drove like that again there would be repercussions.
It didn't work.

Baby Update

We just got back from the doctor and everything is looking good. I'm 36 weeks pregnant (so officially 4 weeks to go), but at my last appointment the belly was measuring two weeks ahead as in, the baby is bigger than expected. So they scheduled a sonogram, measured his head, belly and femur...and he measured small, a week and a day behind, so in the 23rd percentile.

We also got to see that he already has a fair amount of hair on his head. Excellent. It may be prejudiced...but I don't like bald babies.

So...big or small? After feeling the belly, the doctor said he's not as small as the sono showed (and we were warned that they can be inaccurate) and probably will be about 7 lbs at the end. Good baby size. I was 6 lbs something and Casey 7 lbs something, so Indy is right along in there. Also, for the first time she checked my cervix.

For the uninitiated (like we were before a recent childbirth class) there are three things the doctor checks: dilation of the cervix, effacement/thinning of the cervix and engagement of the baby next to the cervix. Currently, I'm 1 cm dilated (of 10 total) and already 30% effaced. And he's head down, facing towards my spine, as he should. The doctor said she could feel the crown of his head already. Of course, we wanted to know, does this mean he's coming early? No, not at all, but if things are starting to progress now, they will hopefully continue to progress without medical intervention. Excellent.

But, if he does decide to come early, we're pretty much ready for him. The first day of Spring Break was spend washing and organizing baby stuff and getting a few last baby things. So, the nursery's ready. Dustin & Aubrey bought us the bassinet, so that's set and ready too.
Susan Lavery's handmade quilt looks quite nice on the wall, I think. I have a few more teddy bear themed decorations in the mail.
And the Indiana Jones poster is absolutely necessary. :-)
For the last three days, I've spent my mornings at White Rock Coffee finalizing my lesson plans. I have 40+ pages of them, everything for the next ten weeks. So, if I go into labor Monday, everything is set for my classes to be in good hands for the rest of the school year. Before Spring Break, I got all the copies and warm-ups ready and organized. So that's good to go. Excellent. I'm three weeks ahead of time, but better safe than sorry.

I had a picnic lunch with Karis, LeeAnn and Kristina at the Arboretum today also. So many flowers: tulips, pansies, hyacinths, crocuses, and so much more. Beautiful.
Tomorrow, Casey and I are going to Hico, Tx to stay at a little bed and breakfast. We've been there before, and there's not much to do...which is kinda the point. Rest, read, relax. It's only two hours away, but still getting out of town, which will be a treat. :-)

An unrelated note or How I Won a Bet:
Casey and I recently had a disagreement over a comment I had made about how clothing used to be more durable, better quality pre-industrialization (hence few people know how to sew or care about repairing clothes now...they're more disposable). Casey vehemently thought it was the reverse. It was an irreconcilable disagreement. So, we decided to make a wager of a staggering $5.

Unfortunately, google searches were unfruitful on yea's or nay's. So, Casey, a devotee of the History Channel's Pawn Stars, took it upon himself to call the show's historical expert at the Clark County Historical Museum in Las Vegas. (Who does that?!? "That guy probably knows...I'm going to get him on the phone!) Well, Casey did. It took two phone calls to get hold of him, and he was not only knowledgeable but voluble. And I was right. Clothing was much more durable in the past because people couldn't afford to replace them and would repair/wear them into rags, and then use the rags as writing material, since paper was also scarce. Another fun fact.

Anyway, after my shock and surprise that Casey had the gumption to call the guy from a popular tv show and actually got the guy on the phone and that the guy was happy to help, I recovered and demanded payment. Victory is sweet. :-)