It's been a blur

I feel so behind in the "blog world." I feel like the last few months have been a blur. I "woke" up the other day and realized that I have an almost 3 year old and an almost 1 year old! Not babies! Where has the time gone? (Down the toilet? Buh-dum-dum!) So much has happened since my last post. I won't even try to go through it all. During the morning sickness madness, my mother-in-law graciously came to help us out. She's a saint. She stayed for 3 1/2 weeks and last Saturday. We were all sad to see her go. I don't know what I would've done without her help. I do think that I'm over the worst of morning sickness, just as Fount has perfected his "throw up" sound. I'm only sick about every other day now.

Our last doctor's appointment was a month ago and everything was just as it should be. We weren't able to hear the heartbeat, which would've freaked me out two pregnancies ago, but I felt like I was on my deathbed knew that "throw up" meant that the baby's doing well and I had just thrown up, so I was comforted in that. Come to find out, once my doctor pulled out the sonogram, the reason we couldn't hear the heartbeat was because the tiny person is a ball of energy. So seeing the heartbeat flicker was as close as we could get. I'm so anxious to hear the heartbeat and have the doctor give me the HR. I know it's an old wives tale, but Holden and Fount both had a HR of 141-142 everytime, so if this baby has the same, I'm going to assume it's another boy and if it's not...is it possible that Ruses make girls?!!! We'll see!

I haven't decided if I'm going to do belly pics this time around. But if you're curious about how I look, I'll tell you that I look pregnant. This time around, instead of stretching out all my regular clothes, during this "chubby-looking" phase, I decided that as soon as my clothes started getting tight, I'd just start wearing maternity clothes, so that's about where I'm at now. And since I was pregnant with the boys in a different season, I only have a few things that I can wear right now. I carried Holden and Fount both differently, even though they were both boys. I'm not sure if I believe in the "high"/"low" scenario.

On to more news- very exciting news!.....Tim has been contacted by a private Catholic boys school in Nagoya, Japan, called Nanzan University, to come speak about his book to their Junior and Senior High School students. Several weeks ago, an article was published in the Nagoya newspaper about a portion of Tim's book, in which his grandfather befriend's a young Japanese boy, who had given him food while he was a prisoner of the Japanese. When the article came out, the students showed such interest in the subject, as did their teacher, that the principle contacted our translator with an invitation to visit the school. It is our hope that, through the article and media coverage, that the Japanese boy, who is now 70ish, will be located. We'll be leaving on November the 8th  to get there on the 9th and returning on the 13th, perhaps getting here on the 14th? I'm not sure. The time difference is 12 hours, I think? We'll be flying from Washington Dulles to Tokyo and from there, onto Nagoya. It'll be weird to travel without the boys. So much less gear...I'm looking foward to reading a book, listening to my Ipod, and watching PG13 movies :) A big difference from our normal traveling. Ha! We'll be meeting one of Tim's brothers there, who will be joining us from Oklahoma. I think we'll have a pretty busy schedule once we're there. We're going to take a TON of pictures and video, so I can't wait. We'll tour the factory in which his grandfather was was forced to work as a POW, we'll tour Hiroshima, and may have the opportunity to meet the US Ambassador for Japan. After reading Tim's book, I see things in Japan, like they were- the scenery- so it'll be quite interesting to see the change that has occured over the years. The countdown begins! Not too much longer now!