Latest baby pics

We got to go see our baby in a 3D ultrasound this afternoon, and that was a lot of fun. It's amazing how much bigger he is now than he was for the last couple of ultrasounds. This short video clip shows the circulation of the blood going through his heart.



Unfortunately, tech wasn't able to get any other video clips because the baby wasn't being very cooperative. Still, we at least got some fun profile shots.

Here you can see the profile of his face and his cute left chubby cheek. There on the right side of the picture is his left arm reaching up over his head, and his right arm, umbilical cord, and right leg are blocking the view of the front of his face.


Hi, Mom and Dad! He was determined to show us every angle of his hands and keep everything else covered up.

Image of the heartbeat, measuring a good and steady 144 beats per minute. The colors on the photo are like the ones in the video clip, just showing the circulation of the blood through the heart.

Sucking on his hand as we try to get him angled for the 3D shots.


Good strong leg bones getting ready for another kick


Brain activity. Once again the colors are showing the circulation of blood through the brain.

Here's another profile shot, though he's turned his head even further away from us. Notice that he's sticking out his tongue in this one.

I think the part that made me laugh the hardest during this experience was when he not only had both arms and hands, a length of umbilical cord, and his leg and foot all covering his face. For at least a few seconds we even got to see him playing with the umbilical cord with his toes. With toes like that he must be related to me, the little monkey!

-Amy

Family photo shoot

One of our friends was wanting to practice her photography skills and asked us to do a maternity photo shoot. We went to a lovely place about 5 miles away from our house called Kubota Gardens. If you live anywhere near the Seattle area, I'd recommend you take some time to go check it out.


We thought this would be a good opportunity to get some family pictures as well as get some good belly shots. We usually do a couple's shoot sometime near the end of the year for our Christmas pictures, but we're assuming that this Christmas we'll be a little too distracted to think about it.



Thanks again, Kelly for an enjoyable time taking pictures and walking around the Japanese gardens.

-Amy

It's a . . .

We finally had our ultrasound this past Friday, August 12th. I scheduled it for the morning, because I was sure I would go crazy waiting for an afternoon appointment.

Surprisingly, instead of getting there really early - which I was afraid we would do - we barely made it in time for our appointment. This was due in part to the fact that both of the elevators near our apartment chose that morning to be broken down. We had to get pretty creative using stairs and a third elevator that's not anywhere near us just to get down to the car.

We got to look at our beautiful baby for around half an hour. The ultrasound tech looked at all of the bones, organs, and placenta just to make sure things were looking functional and properly developed. Everything looked beautiful and she was able to get some good photos. This one below was actually to measure the placenta, and the little one just happened to have a foot right next to it, so we got a nice foot shot.

The surprise of the morning was when she got the following shot, which made the gender rather obvious:

Since Tom and I had both thought it was going to be a girl, we started laughing. This, of course, made the baby kick me more, lol. He's been a pretty active kid for quite awhile. The midwife didn't believe I had started feeling movement just before 15 weeks, but I was certain that's what I was feeling. Now in the ultrasound we came to discover that our little boy is so big he's measuring about two weeks ahead of average. It's no wonder I felt him so early! It looks like he will probably NEVER be wearing newborn size clothes, but I guess since his daddy was 10.5 pounds as a baby I shouldn't be surprised. Here's a shot that shows a little of his action:

Sometime in the next few weeks we're going to get to have a 3D ultrasound done as well (and get paid for it, how can you complain about that?). We're looking forward to seeing our little guy a little more clearly.

-Amy

Depoe Bay Trip

We just got back from a very relaxing trip down to the Oregon coast. Tom's dad put us and his siblings up for a few days right within view of the water, and we all had a great time.


There wasn't quite enough room for all of us in his timeshare, so Tom and I stayed just up the road in a little cottage-like hotel. It was so nice to get away for a long weekend and do a whole lot of nothing.

This was the view from the condo's patio. We got to hear the waves crashing and birds calling 24/7.

John, Abby, and Merrill


All of the adults but me chose to go on a whale watching tour. I was SO very glad I had opted out. I stayed back and watched our 2 year old niece Lorena and got nauseated just when they told me about how much the boat had rocked when they'd gone out.



Jeremy, Abby, and Lorena at Agate Beach


Overlook by Beverly Beach. (Haha, I just noticed that this is the one picture of myself I posted on this blog and my baby bump is all covered up by my jacket)


Lighthouse next to Agate Beach


Lorena with her favorite uncle, John. They were inseparable - when we were getting packed up to leave, she kept making him pick her up or hold her hand, because she knew he was about to leave. It was adorable :)


panoramic view off one of the beaches in the area


Tom and Lorena. She had to keep getting on and off the bench at this lookout. She liked pushing on the bolts and pretending they were buttons. I said "beep" once when she did this, so she started going around pushing them and saying "beet!"





close ups on a squirrel and seagull. There was wildlife everywhere we went, which made for a nice soundtrack.


Beautiful sunset over the ocean. This was a great way to spend our last night in Oregon.

-Amy

Summer and Dan's wedding - 6/10/11

I'm horribly behind posting anything this year. My sister Summer got married to her sweetheart Daniel Gull on June 10th and I still haven't posted any of those pictures, so here we go.


They got married in the LDS Manti Temple in Utah. There were probably 30 or so people there at the ceremony, and a whole lot more at the luncheon and reception later that evening.


It was a whirlwind trip for me. Tom had finals that week so I had to make the trip by myself. It was stressful, but very nice to see all of my siblings. For the second time this year, we were all together in the same place at the same time.


We're all thrilled for them. Isn't she a beautiful bride?


Congratulations, Summer and Dan!

-Amy

Kool-Aid Party

Well, now that I'm a few weeks into the second trimester, I'm thrilled to report that my morning sickness has backed off to almost nothing. Though I've had more excitement than I wanted this past few weeks, the baby is doing great. I started feeling movement a few days ago, which was pretty exciting :)

Since I've been down more than I would like lately, I've been working on several different crafts to keep my hands occupied. I always have a few knitting projects I'm working on, and I've been doing some embroidery as well, but I decided to try something new last night.



I had some natural colored ivory yarn sitting in my knitting case waiting for me to do something with it, so I decided to try my hand at yarn dying for the first time. I found some directions online for dying yarn with kool-aid, so I had Tom run to the store and grab me a bunch of packets of kool-aid to make some red and yellow dyes. It wasn't nearly as messy a process as I thought it would be, though I had to send Tom back to the store for more kool-aid when I was halfway through the process because the color just wasn't as developed as I wanted it to be.



I didn't exactly get the colors I was expecting, but I'm rather proud of my new balls of yarn. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to make out of them.


-Amy

Waiting for Fuzzyhead

We've been lousy at keeping up our blog this year. Tom started back into school full time the first week of January, and he's usually the one who writes these posts. He's doing really well - got a 4.0 the first quarter. Now he has finals coming up again in another couple of weeks and it looks like he'll pull out another one. I'm such a proud wife - he's been working so hard!

In other exciting news, it's happened at last, just when we were about to content ourselves with the cold reality that it would never happen: we're having a baby. That little shadow on the upper right of the ultrasound is growing into our baby (taken a few weeks ago). It has a heartbeat, fingers, toes, and even a gender-neutral nickname: Fuzzyhead.

Our brains have just been awhirl with all the implications of this news and what it will mean in terms of changing our lives. Mostly, though, we're just flat-out excited. Appropriately, the little Gunn is due within a week of Christmas. This will be one unforgettable Christmas.

I'm nine and a half weeks along and we've had a blast telling family and friends, fantasizing about the future, pondering possible names, and even gathering up a few things to prepare. In fact we bought a stroller and car-seat travel set on Craigslist recently. Having it around our place is a regular reminder of the huge changes ahead.

Tom feels confident that it'll be a girl. I go back and forth, but we'll both be thrilled either way.

We're so blessed. We're a little scared about the changes coming, but mostly we're just grateful our family is going to grow.

-Amy