Getting Ready to Go to America

We've put off packing . . . the normal stuff you need to pack for any vacation so we got ourselves pumped up. Vinson was watching "Cars" which meant Dan and I could have 2 . . . at least 1 hour of time to pack. "Dan pojd," Vince called from the living room. Apparently he didn't want to watch the movie alone, and yes he lovingly refers to Dan as Dan. I think it's because it's so close to "Dad." So I packed all of Vinson's stuff and my stuff and took my turn with Vinson. Dan was almost done and we decided to pack a book from the bookshelf. Crash!! The entire shelf fell off the book shelf. We found that a screw was missing and spent the next half an hour trying to fix the bookshelf (which was a failed attempt but the book shelf is lighter we'll see if it stays :) while Vinson kept himeslf busy stacking the books that were all over the floor. He had two good piles going and we figured he was busy and happy and weren't paying any particular attention to him. Then Vinson decided to put BOTH of our cellphones in a cup of water. I caught him pretty quickly, and Dan hurried off to try to get all of the water out that he could. I was still trying to put the bookshelf together and Vince got out of being punished. Our phones still aren't working properly. Hopefully two weeks of drying will fix them. Long story short . . . it's taken us a lot longer to pack and clean up than we'd expected to. It's still not done, I took a break to try to laugh at the day.

Apparently I wrote too soon. I started making dinner and Dan decided to see if our Temple recommends were expired. Mine is expired. So between making dinner and trying to make calls on our still not entirely functioning phone and burning a few french toast Vince decided he was hungry and grabbed the opened box of milk -yes milk comes in boxes :( - and dumped it all over the floor. It might have started out as an accident, but by the end it was obvious he was quite enjoying himself pouring the milk all over the floor. There is a happy ending: we cleaned up Vinces mess while he was being punished in the crib, I was finally able to eat (man do I get hungry) and with Skype I was able to finish all of the phone calls. What a day!

Answer Blog

Nothing exciting has been going on with us. We're going to Utah in exactly one week and are super stoked for that! I've started packing since Christmas trying to take home everything that we don't need here but want to keep like board game boxes. So we'll have a lot to write about when we get back, but a lot of people have asked me questions, so here is the answer blog.

1. Will we go back to the U.S. to have the baby? We will have the baby here. The Czech Republic is supossed to be one of the best places for deliveries. I am still a little nervous, though. We'll start doctor searching when we come back. I really want someone who can speak decent English. Some differences I've heard about are that you go to the doctor every 3 weeks during the whole pregnancy and they do a lot of ultrasounds. Which is pretty similar to my experience with Vinson. With having the baby you have a lot more options: standing up, etc. but epidurals are very uncommon :( Hopefully everything will work out so I can have one. There's no need to feel pain, right ;) Afterwards you and your baby and all of the other mothers and their babies share a room, which doesn't sound so fun. Dan can't sleep there, and it's not a two nights max thing. Anything less than a week stay isn't normal :( There is an upside to it, though. One of my good friends just had a 2 year old birthday party with her daughter and all of the other kids that were born around the same time. The mothers were there long enough that they became good friends. I'm really good at small talk in Czech, but we'll see how it goes. I guess I can handle anything for just a week.

2. How am I feeling? Great! I'm one of those lucky ones that everyone that has horrible experiences hate. I haven't had morning sickness at all. I can tell I'm pregnant though. I'm hungry all the time and if I don't eat then I get dizzy. I hate coming up with 3 meals to eat everyday, and this 5 smaller meals is driving me nuts. Especially since oftentimes nothing we have sounds good to me. My only craving, if I could call it that is orange juice. I'm not sure it's a craving, but I never wanted it before and it always sounds good to me now. My sense of smell is better so Dan has to clean out the fridge. My weirdest symptom is that I have nightmares more often, It happened with Vinson too, but it seems like my bladder wakes me up before it gets too bad. I'm showing a tiny tiny bit but not much. You can't tell if I'm wearing a shirt.

3. Do we want a boy or a girl? It would be fun to have a girl, but we already have so many boy clothes and two boys close in age would be fun . . . honestly we'd be fine with either but am leaning twards a girl. As soon as I find out what it is we'll be thrilled either way!

Suprise

Yeah!!! I'll be due in August. Vince has been really excited about babies lately, so hopefully that means he's ready.

New Years

Living in Prague is fun all the time, but there are times it definately has huge advantages. It's crazy how many fireworks they set off here for New Year's. Last year we didn't celebrate and tried to go to bed, sleep was useless as we heard boom! boom! boom! for what seemed like hours. This year, Dan and I bought chips and dip and watched a movie and played games. Then about 20 to midnight we woke Vinson up, I know we're awful parents :) and went to a bridge near our house. We figured it would be a good place to see fireworks and we were right!! We were the only ones in the area not celebrating with champagne and a nice guy offered us some. We politely declined. Vinson loved it for a few minutes then he kept saying "quack quack" which means ducks, birds and rivers and lakes. Aparently the water was more interesting. But he was a good sport. It was a blast! We were surrounded by fireworks, but none were really close.


I just thought it was funny that the Chinese Restaurant had more fireworks trash in front of it than anywhere else! It also happens to be right across the street, maybe next year we should just go out the front doors for a closer show. :)

The next day they have fireworks for the kids in a park by our house. We were compelled to walk there, which really wasn't that far. The trams were so packed that when the doors opened people spilled out and had to cram their way back on. The fireworks were great!

You can see a little of how packed it was in this picture. The trams finally started moving again after a half an hour of stand still traffic. People even got out of their cars to watch the fireworks.