Social Media Experiment

One of the things I am considering focusing on for my Master's Degree is Social Media and its effects on society. As a fun little experiment, I saw today an article in the Daily Universe saying that BYU was getting thrashed in a contest to bring Weezer to the winning college campus. As of 4:30 pm today we were still getting killed, we had 237 votes compared to the first place Florida State who had over 9,000.

Now I am a huge FSU fan, but lets see if we can catch up and make this a contest! I wouldn't mind seeing Weezer in concert.

Belly Progression

Today one of my classmates (a guy who I've only known since September) looked at me and said, "You are not showing at all. How far along are you?" On the other hand, I met with brand new client at work today. She is 32, has 4 kids, is a runner and is in great shape. I went ahead and asked her about jogging strollers since I am in the process of choosing one for myself. She looked at me and said, "I noticed a little tummy and thought to myself 'she must be pregnant and just starting to show'." So I get both types of comments. Some people say I do not look pregnant and some say they can tell I'm getting bigger. I have to agree with the latter, although I think I just look a little chubbier, not really pregnant. I guess this is the awkward stage where people don't know if I'm pregnant or just gaining a little weight. Here are a couple pictures to track my progress. You can decide for yourself.

Me at 16 weeks (2 weeks ago).
This was the day when many of my pants stopped fitting and I had to adopt the rubber band/button hole trick.

Today at 18 weeks.
I can wear these old, grungy, stretched out jeans no problem and one other pair with the a rubber band, but once they stop working I will be out of luck and on to bigger and better pants. Luckily, we got some sweet deals on maternity pants at Gap and Old Navy this weekend. They still seem huge, but they will probably fit before I know it.

The past couple of days I have thought that I can feel the baby, but who knows! I will be more convinced when it is more obvious. We have an ultrasound scheduled for Dec. 1. We are pretty excited and hope the baby will cooperate so we can find out the gender.

Happy Halloween!

I love dressing up for Halloween, or for any occasion really. However, this past month has been pretty hectic with midterms, projects, sickness, etc. Whenever we would think about what to be for Halloween, nothing would come to us and we would forget about it.
On Friday, the day of Mandy's Halloween party, I was ready to give up. I figured I could just go as a pirate and Landon could be a soccer player (our default costumes). While walking to school I suddenly came up with an idea Landon would go for. I have to say, for getting everything together in a couple hours, I think we looked pretty awesome.

Here is our inspiration.

We dressed up as Tom and Summer from 500 Days of Summer. We thought this movie was great. The soundtrack is great, and its nonlinear narrative plot was done exceptionally well. And we could really identify with the characters, as I'm sure everyone could in one way or another. Here we are!

The cute couple.
Us again.

Me as Summer. Summer always wears at least one shade of blue. She often wears headbands and tucks her blouses into her mid-rise pants and skirts.

Tom often wears sweater vests or v-neck sweaters with a skinny tie and rolled up sleeves. He also wears his headphones a lot of the time. Landon had speakers hooked up to an ipod in his messenger bag and had Hall and Oates playing as well as other songs from the movie.

The pictures may be hard to tell, but yes, I sprayed my hair to be a brunette.

Fashion Show

My mom bought me some cute maternity clothes and we decided to have a fashion show since I can now stick my "bump" out. I don't stick out this much yet, but I have a feeling I will start getting bigger in the next few weeks.

Maybe one day I will look like this (below). I stuck a mixing bowl in my shirt.

My cheesy pose. I was trying to cover up the flat part of the bowl.

Gender Guesses Continued

So there have been a lot of votes so far and we thought maybe we could liven things up a bit. Katherine found a website that had a few methods of "predicting" the gender of the baby. Here are the results of our tests:

Heart-rate test

First, the heart-rate test. According to this test if the heart-rate is above 140 the baby is a girl and if it is less than this, it is a boy. You can see on the first picture of the sonogram that is has the heart rate = 165.8. Katherine wanted me to mention that all of the doctors thought she was a boy, because she had a slower heart beat.

Result: GIRL

Chinese Gender Chart

Here is what the website says about this next one: "Legend states that the Chinese Gender Chart was buried in a royal tomb near Beijing over 700 years ago. The original is allegedly currently in the Institute of Science in Beijing. Rumors have it that this chart is over 90% accurate when used properly but please remember that this chart is for entertainment purposes only."

So keep in mind. Entertainment purposes only.

Result: BOY

Needle Method

In this method you thread a needle and dangle it over the stomach of the pregnant woman. It also said online that you could dangle it over her wrist instead. We tried both methods and I have to say that this method was a little sketchy. If the needle swings in a "strong circular motion" then the baby is a girl. If it just swings back and forth it is a boy. It was a little hard to tell what was actually happening... it started out in a circular motion and then ended up just swinging back and forth the first time we did it. Then we switched to the wrist motion and it seemed to be more circular. Probably not the most accurate test, but we concluded:

(Side note on this one... Katherine is very convinced by this test for some reason. She insists that it always does a circular motion.)



Result: GIRL

Old Wives Tales Quiz

This next method is just a quiz with a bunch of old wives tales such as the following:

After 15 questions:

Hardly decisive and some of the questions couldn't really be answered, like about how the baby kicks and stuff.

Result: GIRL

The Final Test - Intelligender

Okay, this one is the big kahuna. This is a urine test you can pick up at walgreen's that claims about 80% accuracy. Still enough chance of error that you want to wait for the sonogram to know for sure, but accurate enough to make things exciting.


The website for the product has the following to say:

"Can pregnant women use this test in place of a sonogram?
No, the test is designed as a fun, positive pre-birth experience for the parents-to-be. IntelliGender does not recommend test users to make any financial, emotional or family planning decisions based on the test results. This includes painting a nursery! Seeing an obstetrician as early in the pregnancy is critical for the health of the mother and the baby. Pregnant women should follow the advice of their physician for decisions related to their pregnancy."

Also, the website has these images of what the results are supposedly going to look like:



In our case the results were not nearly dark enough to be labeled as a boy. It looked much more like the girl results.

Result: GIRL

You can interpret these tests however you like, just be careful in reaching an incorrect conclusion. We will let you know how the sonogram turns out when that time comes... still a few weeks to go!

Gender Guesses

I just added a poll to allow people to guess the gender of the baby. Also, feel free to make a comment on the post to let us know who is guessing what.

We're still here

Emily requested a new blog post, so here it is. Here are some things that have happened since the last time we did a post.

• I completed my thesis proposal and have started my project
• Landon's family came to visit us in July
  
• We went to Boise and McCall, Idaho with my parents and Annie's family
• Landon started his first semester of grad school
• We found out that we are expecting our first child in April!

Needless to say, our lives have been busy and exciting!
I am now about 12 weeks pregnant and had my second appointment yesterday. We were hoping to hear the heartbeat, but they could only find mine! They weren't concerned and explained that the baby was likely in a position where it was difficult to catch the heartbeat. But to be safe, they had me go in this morning for an ultrasound. It was the greatest experience! I had no idea we would be able to see the baby so clearly this early. The baby was moving around like crazy and the heartbeat was strong and fast. I am right on schedule and everything looked good. I am so grateful for the experience. My pregnancy seems more real than ever now. And now we have our baby's first pictures! The pictures aren't as clear as they were on the screen, but I still think they are fun.

This one shows the heart rate.

Here you can see the large head, the dark white line is the spine, and the body.
Another view of the cute head and body.My favorite! Look at that tiny arm and adorable little hand!