First time ever I saw your face

We had another round of ultrasound on Tuesday to check on the growth of the baby.  Once again, it was all good news - he's the right size and shape, and he's even flipped to be head down since the last ultrasound (which is how he should be at this point).  In some of the previous ultrasounds, the tech had a little trouble tracking him down inside Emily's belly.  Not this time though - it's ALL baby in there!

Profile view using 2D ultrasound... it's tough to get a good view of him this way anymore now that he's so big

The regular ultrasounds are nice, but next was the really cool part.  Since the tech was able to get through her checklist pretty quickly and the baby was lying in a cooperative position for a change, she decided to take a few minutes to use the 3D probe to try and get a real picture of the baby's face.  It turned out way better than I expected it to... so incredible to see his little face for the first time.

Check after the jump to get a sneak preview of Baby Boy Basque's handsome face!

Secretly Pregnant

She hides it well, doesn't she? :)

More Baby Facts

One of my favorite things about being pregnant is all the amazing things that are happening to my body and to the baby in such a short period of time. It just is astounding that there is a whole little person living inside me right now! He's about five pounds and is developed enough that he could be on the outside kicking his dad instead of on the inside kicking my bladder. It's better for him to stay tucked in my belly for the next 5 and a half weeks, but he's just putting the finishing touches on right now.

The Chicago Museum of Science has an interactive online exhibit where you can watch a video called Make Room for Baby that shows how the organs move and adjust in a mother's body for the baby. Definitely take a look - it's crazy how small the liver gets!

After the jump some cool facts about babies.

Stuffy Nose (Be Prepared for Complaints)

I'm finally getting over the first illness I've had during the pregnancy. On the surface it appeared to be a simple cold - but it was much more malevolent than that. My nose was so stuffy! I am not usually one to take anything when I am sick, but man I really wanted some NyQuil or Sudafed or _something_. Sleeping is hard enough with our huge baby wiggling around in my belly, but not being able to breathe adds a really not fun dimension to that.

I am certain that I got sick from standing in cold, dirty water all night Wednesday night and Saturday night. As a side note - Alan's post and pictures about Wednesday night's flood didn't quite convey the magnitude of water that was pouring from our ceiling. It was more water than the quantity of four showers and coming in anywhere within a 2 to 3 foot radius. We filled buckets in a minute and the sink couldn't keep up with the water we were dumping into it. Finally we just threw in the towel (forgive me) and made the levee in that picture Alan took.

These are the worst things about being sick this past week:

Breaking the fourth wall (5/3 - 5/12)

The reason the temperature and weather affected us so much this past week is because we're now getting to the point where they're tying in the new construction parts of the house into the existing original sections.  This means that areas that so far have been safe and untouched (the upstairs bathroom and the 1st floor living room in particular) are now starting to suffer some of the same violations that the master bedroom and kitchen already went through.

The start of the new second floor above the temp laundry room

Lots more pictures and details after the jump...

Well-deserved

It's not always as tough as this weekend has been.  This is a picture from earlier this month of Emily (and baby) enjoying some sunshine and quiet time, both of which have been far too rare lately.

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in

This has been the toughest couple of days of the house renovation process for us so far .  When the work on the new roof started the forecast was for a day of light rain and then a warm weekend.  As soon as things were opened up that changed to something much wetter and colder.  It's been 10-15 degrees colder than normal for this time of year and we had almost constant heavy rain.  The worst part was Friday night, when it rained steadily from early evening until late Saturday morning.  Larry set up a drainage system in the kitchen to funnel the water from the leak back outside, and that caught most of it.  But there was just too much water so it spread out into more areas than the drain could handle.  So we ended up with buckets all over the kitchen to catch the drips, and had to keep adding new containers and emptying the old ones throughout the night.  This is what we ended up with around 3am:

The biggest leak was dripping off the vent pipe over the stove, but fortunately that space was exactly the right size to fit our trash barrel which you can see wedged in there in this pic