Much has happened in the last week... I went to see Dr. Moore for another check up and got to see the awesome progress our little boy has made, got hit by a hurricane, evacuated after a hurricane, felt the baby go crazy, finally got electricity back, and now I'm waiting to get new tires since mine are flat. So, let's start from the beginning...
Last Thursday was my 2nd appointment with Dr. Moore. We were supposed to just look at my cervix, but seeing as how my pap smear with him came back positive I suppose he didn't need to look just at that. We did another full blown ultrasound and measured the progress of the baby's vital organs. I felt really bad because Lou wasn't able to go because work is crazy right now. All was looking great and normal until Dr. Moore measured the baby's femur bone and noticed a rather large growth spurt. Not that that is bad, but you may recall just two weeks ago that I reported that the baby (we are back to just calling him baby Lawrence since the name debacle is still underway) was 9 ounces and in the 52 percentile for baby's at his stage. Well, in two weeks our son DOUBLED in size. He is now a full pound and in the 77 percentile for baby's at his stage. Dr. Moore looked impressed and said that we were shaping up to have a pretty big baby. WHAT! I knew deep down that there was always that possibility since the men in my family are all over 6' and Lou has some tall men in his family too, but it was still a shock to hear that Lou and I are shaping up for a big baby. Funny. Dr. Moore confirmed that he is still a boy and no sex change operation happened in the last two weeks. Lou and I are very pleased that our boy is growing to be a big and healthy baby boy. That Thursday was also the day that most of Houston started to panic about IKE. I went to work for about half a day and then Lou and I went out in search of preparations to get ready to be hit head on by a hurricane on Friday.
Friday turned out to be pretty uneventful until early evening. We had brought everything in from outside and just prepared as best we could for the worst. It was about 8 'clock when we lost power. We just knew it would come back on because it hadn't even started raining yet, but alas the power was out for good. We decided to go ahead and go to bed. The wind and rain woke me up about midnight. I went to the window to look out and Lou asked what it looked like. I said that I could still see downtown so it wasn't too bad. I went back to bed and woke up again around 3:30 and it was definitely a different story. The sound of the nails creaking in the roof were enough to make my toes curl. I woke Lou up and said that I thought it was time to go down to a lower floor, and as the only hurricane veteran in the house, I was alone in my worried state. I was so nervous and anxious that the baby was doing flips in my belly, which of course added to my uneasy feeling. I looked out of the same window in our bedroom and could no longer see downtown. Scary. I went to the second floor and looked at the street and noticed that there wasn't any standing water in the street, which made me feel a little better. I sat up and listened to the news on the radio for about an hour until I had heard the latest IKE update that said that the worst was about to be over and downtown should start to see relief soon. Whew. Ok, I went back to bed. We all woke up around 7:30 and the scene outside of our house was unnerving. I walked out onto our balcony and saw flood water almost up to our front porch step. Lou looked at me in amazement and asked very calmly if we had flood insurance. NO, WE DON'T! So, while the wind and the rain were still raging, Lou and Ryan strode out in the water to clear the storm drains. That did the trick and the water quickly receded. The dogs had to tee tee, as you can imagine, so we took the out behind the houses were we were a little bit more shielded from the wind. We walked down to each corner and saw water as far as the eye could see. We saw a Scion under water. We saw the 4 story town homes on the street behind us with water on the 1st floor. We saw the crack houses to the side of us with water on the 1st floor. We saw Elgin completely under water, and we saw out beautiful park totally devastated. It was about 1 pm when the humidity started making it miserable, so we all packed up to go to a hotel for the night, but the hotel was also without power. We ended up in College Station in one of the last rooms in the city. We stayed there from Saturday until Monday because Lou was being summonsed back to work on Tuesday. Coming home was a huge relief, but the drive through town was an eye opener to all the devastation that has overcome Houston. The weather was absolutely beautiful, so we opened all the windows in the house and prepared to be urban campers until power was restored. All of our neighbors had come together to grill the remaining bits of meat that hadn't spoiled, so we joined it as well. At night we all circled around a Coleman lantern and finally got to know one another. We have all lived there for 3+ years and never knew each others names, so it was a great bonding experience for us all. Tuesday was a riot because the trash had piled up and was really stank, and Mayor White had promised that trash services were resuming. Finally about 5 the trash guys showed up. You would have thought we'd won a collective multi million dollar jackpot the way we rejoiced. By Tuesday afternoon, Lou was getting a little tired of roughing it so he called Sam's to see if they had any generators. They did. So we rushed to Sam's to buy a generator to at least run the fridge and maybe the TV. They had generators all right...you had a choice of a $600 or a $1000 generator. WHATEVER! We debated back and forth about what to do and I said that they way our luck goes as soon as we get home after waiting in line for gas for this generator we'll have power. The better alternative, and the one we went with, was to buy a huge ice chest and gobs of ice. Of course the flip side of our reasoning not to get a generator was that if we didn't get the generator we'd probably not get power back until October, but we took a chance anyway.
Wednesday we got power back! One of our neighbors hunted down a Center Point guy and he said that because we had a down pole and transformer that we weren't on the bottom of the list but that we were pretty darn close. Well, he was wrong. I was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of cereal when we heard a "crack". I looked over and the lamp as on and I looked up and the fan was on. I cocked my head like dogs do because it wasn't registering with me what had happened. What was this glow of yellowish light? Then WHAM! it hit me. POWER!!!!!!!!! I ran upstairs to wake Lou from his nap just hoopin' and a hollarin'. Yeah, for not buying a generator!!
Through all of this the baby was going nuts. There was one night that I called Lou over and had him put his hand on by belly to let him feel his son's antics. Lou was amazed! The baby was flipping and flopping all over the place. One morning I woke up to see this large bump on my belly and I realized it was the baby sticking his butt in the air. It's been wonderful to feel him finally moving on a regular basis. I suppose it was bound to happen since he's grown so much.
I'm glad we didn't buy a generator for the obvious reason, but now we need new tires for the Civic. Lou and Johnie walked outside this morning and saw a flat tire. URG!
I started another registry on JC Penny's for the baby's furniture. When Lou and I started looking at bedding we saw a crib in one of the ads that we really liked. It was a modern piece with a bookcase/changer on the end. I couldn't find that crib anywhere until this morning. It's at JC Penny's!! Yeah! So I deleted the crib and dressers and such from the Babies R Us site and registered for the crib and dresser on the JC Penny site. We're not certain we'll have a new house to bring the baby home to now. It's almost October and Ryland still hasn't started on our house. I know houses can be built in three months, but now with the aftermath of IKE to deal with, I know there will be material/labor shortages. Plus, we're putting our house on the market in a few more weeks. I just love the flux our life is in right now. It keeps things interesting to say the least. Well, I must be off. I have to make a few phone calls to find tires and reschedule with our painter.
