Elliott has a lot to live up to!

Ok, I found this on Youtube and it gives me a goal to shoot for when Elli is born.  It is a 3 year old little girl talking about Star Wars.  Needless to say, it is AWESOME!!!  

If you don't think I'm making her watch Star Wars until she can recite the story line, you're crazy...  Or maybe I'm crazy...

Oh well, Happy Friday!

Picture Time

Well...  We tried...  We finally got around to posting pictures.  I don't know if our doctor doesn't have the capability to put the pictures on a disk, or if we are supposed to ask, but all we have are the printouts that they give you.  We also don't have a scanner, so that makes it hard to put them on the blog.  So I took them to work and scanned them and e-mailed them to myself, so the quality isn't that great.  Hopefully we will have better pictures next time.  As for us, Jennie has been battling a sore back.  It isn't pregnancy related, but it has not been fun for the last couple of days.  So, without further ado...  Here is Elliott at 18 weeks...

 

Here are two pictures of her sucking her thumb.  If you look really close, you can see all of her fingers on her hand!

The top picture is a shot of her face.  You can kind of make out eyes and a nose.  The bottom one confirms she is a girl.  You can't see anything, which is how we know she is a girl! 

Elliott is Healthy!

Well, I am tired of seeing the previous post each time I login, so it is time for some positive news!  Last week we got great news.  All of the blood work that Jennie did came back negative.  So it appears that Baby Elliott is healthy!  Now, the tests aren't 100% accurate, but they are pretty close.  We are just happy that everything came back negative.  Now Jennie can sleep a little easier, at least for two hours, until she has to get up to go to the bathroom!

Now, I know that each post ends this way, but I promise we will put pictures up soon.  So please keep checking back.  Also, thanks for all the feed back we have gotten about the blog.  It is nice to know that people are reading it!  We will try to be more consistent with our updates.  

Have a great week!

The Reality of the Corporate World

This blog is going to be really boring if we just wait for pregnancy news before we update it, so I decided that we would open it up a little more and not just focus on the latest doctor's visit.  It is hard for Jennie and I to pull back the curtain on our lives, as we are probably the most guarded, private people that I can think of (this blog aside!).  We really don't let people get too close, which is something we need to work on.  Maybe this blog will act as a pseudo-therapy source.  All under the guise of our baby.  Also, I have always enjoyed writing, ever since AP English in high school, but I've never found the proper outlet for it.  Well, Hello Blog!

I have gotten to see first hand the cruel hand of Corporate Life this week.  Thankfully, I am shielded from most aspects of Corporate Life since I work in sports.  I don't have to deal with quarters, buzz words, or any of the corporate jargon that has taken over the business world.  However, one piece of business speak managed to sneak into the Texas Rangers organization this week...  Streamline...

This is a fancy way to say "lay-offs," which is a fancy way to say that people are getting fired.  Now, thank goodness, my job isn't in jeopardy.  But we had to let someone from our department go, and that was true for pretty much every department in the organization.  One of the people let go in the sales department was someone that I worked very closely with, and in turn I will be taking over some of his responsibilities.  And, to add a degree of difficulty, this is the start of our busiest time so the learning curve will be quick and not real forgiving.  I am not complaining.  I just feel bad for the people that came to work yesterday with a job and left at lunch without one.  It was an eye-opener to say the least...

I am looking forward to the challenge.  God only gives you what you can handle right?

One positive note, the Ryan Express has pulled into the ballpark.  That's right, Nolan Ryan is my new boss (in a round-about way).  I haven't officially met him yet, but I did get to shake his hand as I walked into his press conference.  Hopefully he will restore a little credibility that we have lacked in recent years...

I know we promised sonogram pictures.  We will try to get them up in the next couple of days.  Have a great week!  Peace...

Sonogram Day!

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. We are still trying to get the hang of this blogging think. We will try to do better. (Ok Melissa, does that make you feel better?)

Well we went in for an "official" sonogram yesterday. I say "official" because this one was actually done by a doctor, not Jennie playing around at work! It was fun because we got to go into the room with the big flat screen TV. The last couple of times we have gone in, that machine wasn't working, so we had to settle for the back up machine. It looked like we were headed for the back up machine again when, at the last second, Joe the sonographer changed his mind and took us to the big screen! It was awesome! He pointed out the four chamber heart, both kidneys, the spine, the rib cage, and confirmed that it was a girl... We got lots of cute pictures. She was putting her hand in her mouth again. We will try to put some up later.

After Elliott's debut on the big screen, we went in and talked to Dr. Livingston (He brought us cookies! The perks of being a VIP.). He answered all of our questions and talked to us about genetic testing. Basically, the sono looked perfect, but that only catches 65% of potential problems, so we have to get blood taken from Jennie to make sure everything else checks out. It is extremely more complicated than that, but that is the basic idea. It was very interesting. Jennie got her blood drawn and then it was off to Burger King to boost up that blood sugar! It was a fun day!

It's A Girl!!

Well we did it... We finally decided to get a blog. Now I know what you are thinking, "Why do you guys need a blog?" I wondered this as well, but then we got the wonderful news that we were pregnant, and then we found out that we were having a little girl, and we thought, what better way to keep all of our family and friends up-to-date on the pregnancy and our new baby than by documenting our lives through a blog. Plus, we refuse to get on MySpace!

Now, on to the big news... It's a girl! And she already has a name, it is Elliott Grace Jackson. We are so happy! We are at the 17 week mark and she is about 7 inches long. Mom can feel her moving and kicking already, so we might have our hands full! Every time we look at her on the sono machine (which is a lot because Jennie has unlimited access at work) she is sucking her thumb (as you can see in the picture to the left) and swimming around. It is so cute!

Now we start the process of shopping for the nursery. It is a little more involved than we originally thought, not to mention expensive, but it is very exciting at the same time! We haven't picked colors or anything, we are just shopping around, trying to get ideas.

Well, thanks for stopping by to check out our blog. We can't wait to share our journey with all of you!