A Message to my Darling Maggie.

Dear Maggie,

I have sat around thinking long and hard about what to write to you. So many thoughts are running through my head trying to find the right words to say. All of my life I have thought about finding the right woman, getting married and having children. Now this has become a reality. Your arrival is just weeks away and I am so excited to meet you. I am curious to know how you will be. What do you look like? How will you act? The one thing that I don’t question is how I feel about you. You have not even come into this world yet, but I love you so much. I am already so proud of you. I want so much to hold you and kiss you and tell you all of this. I want to hold you by the hand and take you to your first day of school. I want to give you a hug and tell you to have a good day, and that everything will be alright. There are so many more things that I want to do that will have to wait. I need to just enjoy you as you are and try not to rush this life. I need to enjoy it all as it comes. I will love you everyday and a little more the next.
Can't wait to see you.
Love,
Papa

The only thing I have to give you.

I promise to hold you as much as possible
I promise to cover you in kisses every day
I promise to tell you how pretty you are all the time
I promise to bury my face in your neck and memorize your smell
I promise to say I love you
I promise to have special mama time with you regularly
I promise to be there for the beginning and the end of every first day of school
I promise to teach you to ride a two-wheeled bike
I promise to encourage you in any sport or hobby you choose
I promise to come to all of your games
I promise to love your Papa until the end of time
I promise to always remind you that you were made from love
I promise to buy you your first car, but only one
I promise I will always keep you safe, until you are 16 and you drive away for the first time on your own, then I promise I will cry.
I promise to take you dress shopping
I promise to teach you how to wear makeup
I promise to never make you have a haircut you don't like
I promise that if you have my butt, I will help you find jeans to fit it, at any cost
I promise to glow with pride at your every accomplishment
I promise you can go anywhere you want for college
I promise to pay for your education, as long as you do your part
I promise to glow on your graduation days, your wedding day and on the day of the birth of your children
I promise to always surround you with people who love you
I promise to protect you from the ugly stuff, but never let you pretend it doesn't exist
I promise that I will make mistakes
I promise there will be days that you hate me
I promise that even on those days, I will love you more than anyone else in the whole world
I promise to be your mama until I take my last breath
Then I promise to look over you from heaven and keep your children safe, so that you can make all these promises to them too.

I love you Magdalena.

You go to the head of the class...over acheiver!

Last week we had our 30 week check up. On avaerage, Maggie should be measuring about 1 cm for every week. At the 28 week check up she was right on par, as usual. At the 30 week check up she measured 32.5 cm! That means she grew 4.5 cm in 2 weeks. And it shows!

31 weeks

You stole my heart but I love you anyway.

I think reality is finally hitting home. I felt terrible for the first 16 weeks, then one day all the sickness went away, and I didn't even feel pregnant. Now, I feel very pregnant and I LOOK pregnant! I am 27 weeks along.


Jaime gets a good giggle everyday at the sheer size of my mid-section. It seems impossible, but she grows every day. I am still maintaining my weight very well. I have only gained about 4 lbs. It helps that I have lost a few pound thanks to getting my thyroid issue diagnosed and not drinking lots of beer on the weekends. I only have 13 weeks to go, and 11 +/- pounds to gain.

Can you believe that? In 13 weeks or less, I will have a Maggie. I can't even wrap my brain around that! My life will forever be changed, I am so excited. It seems like time has flown by. I am really trying to enjoy this part. I want to appreciate what time I have left with just her. This is the last few weeks that I won't have to share her with the world. For the next 13 weeks she is all mine. I have tried to savor every kick (even the hard ones), and enjoy that this experience is just for us. I know her so well now. She has a schedule, she is very particular and she knows how to tell me what she wants or doesn't like.

Along the way I have done my best to share all of this with Jaime. I want him to know what it feels like, what she is doing in there. He is so cute about the whole thing. He marvels at my belly, talks to her, sings to her and even rubs his belly on mine. Last night at 11:00 all I could think about was Ben & Jerry's: "Everything but the...". (Let me just say, if you have not had it, try it...OMG!) Jaime happily got up and went to Tom thumb to get me a pint. Of course he got one too, and there we were; happy as 2 pigs in shit. We ate our ice cream, mumbled about he magnificence of each flavor and burped chocolate wonders. It was awesome! I have to say that my husband ranks right up there with David Letterman: cute, funny and a total smart ass. Just want I want in a man!

It makes me feel so special to be having a baby with him. I knew we were meant to be forever pretty early on in the relationship, we hit a groove and haven't looked back in 6 years. But I never knew that anything could bring us closer. I have a part of him inside of me, and she will be the forever representation of our love for each other. We will look at her every day and think "look what we made!" I know it will be spectacular. I love him so much it hurts. He makes me happy to be Mama. Once again proving that I am the luckiest girl in the world.

I love you fatty.

Rockin' the belly.

Every night when I go to bed, I turn to Jaime and say, "Can you believe we are having a baby".
Every night he turns to me and says, "nope".

We try to have a little "belly time" every night. We talk about her. We talk about us. We talk about our crazy mothers and all of the things they are already doing for her. We talk about how our lives will change when she gets here. We talk about what she will look like. We talk about where she will go to college. We always talk about what kind of music we will play for her.

Jaime loves music. He has a soundtrack for life, there is always something playing in the background. No matter what he is doing, he does it with tunes. He wants her to love music the way he does, love the bands he loves, rock out the way he does. I want her to be a good dancer, I was never very good at that.

So far she's heard Rod Stewart (Wake up Maggie will be her theme song!), Bob Schneider & Cake. Any suggestions?

Maggie goes to Washington.

This July marked the final baby-free vacation. We had been hoping to visit uncle Joe and Dan in D.C. for over a year, and we FINALLY had our chance. Sara bought me a new phone for Christmas, and as part of the deal it came with a free companion pass to use this year. We found a deal on tickets and flew out on Thursday night. Of course our flight was delayed by almost 2 hours. Uncle Joe had already directed us that he would be meeting us at baggage claim #8. He also informed us that if we were late, he would leave cots for us at baggage claim #8. Luckily, he had Dan with him, and he has a soft spot for us so they waited for us to arrive.

After a long haul back to Haymarket that night, we arrived in time for a midnight snack (my favorite time of day). I had a few beers to wash it down and then it was off to bed. We had a big day ahead of us.

Friday, July 3rd
The morning began at 6:30am. We had a tight schedule according to our tour guide and had to be out of the house by 9:00. Uncle Joe served a continental breakfast (his words, not mine) and a quick look at the Post. Then we were off to the metro station to take our first train ride into D.C.

We arrived at the mall just as the Folk-Life Festival was beginning. First we found a port-a-pottie for my pregnant wife, then we found a Chicago Style hot dog for me! They were so good!

Have you had one of these? I highly recommend. Here how it's done:

A typical Chicago-style hot dog includes:

• Steamed poppy seed hot dog bun
• All beef hot dog (steamed) (preferably Vienna Beef)
• Yellow mustard
• Chopped white onion (raw)
• Neon green relish
• Sport peppers
• Tomato wedges
• Crisp kosher dill pickle spear
• Dash of celery salt

It was like nothing I have ever had, and I am quite the connoisseur. This dog gave the vendor at 52nd and Central Park West a run for his money!


After the morning snack we headed over to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Sara needed to see those Ruby Slippers! You know the ones...

I was also able to reconnect with some old pals!

We had hoped to make it to the archives, but the line was around the corner (literally) so we opted for lunch instead (yay!). We laid in the grass, listened to music and Sara mentally prepared for the hike over to the Lincoln Memorial. On the way we saw the Washington Monument.

Then we passed by 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Then the WWII Monument.

A much need potty break.

Then we made it over to the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

Finally we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial.

We decided to climb the stairs for a closer look, but Sara decided that if she climbed the stairs she was going to be sleeping with Honest Abe. But she was happy to stay below and take our picture!

It wasn't a bad way to end the day. Sara and I had a great time...
And Maggie did too!

CHECK BACK LATER FOR PHOTOS AND TO READ ABOUT THE REST OF OUR TRIP!

Made in Mexico.

I always thought that I would want to write to my baby when the time came for me to have my own. I thought that I would be filled with so many thoughts and emotions that they would have to spill out somewhere, and seeing as how I live and die by my mac, I could only assume that they would come out on a blog! I didn't know that it would take me 5 months to muster up the energy to get the ball rolling, therefore I am officially playing catch-up.

Today marks my 24th week of pregnancy. Today also marks the first day that I have been emotionally driven to write about this little girl growing inside of me. I think it must be because today is the first day that she will not have any part of me forgetting that she is in there. I woke up today to her hiccups, spent breakfast with some low swift kicks to my bladder, rounded out the afternoon with some chops to my right abdomen, and even now as I sit here, she is having a dance party in the middle somewhere.


Everyday is an adventure. I spent the first 8 weeks keeping it a secret and trying to forget that I there was a person in there. We had promised to keep it a secret until we were in a safe zone and felt more comfortable sharing our news and the more I thought about it, the harder it was to keep quiet. Jaime and I are avid web searchers, so we knew early on that this pregnancy, like half of all first time pregnancies, could end in miscarriage, and I just wasn't willing to take the chance of spilling the beans only to then have to tell people that I had lost the baby. We opted to wait until 14 weeks to spread the news. Extenuating circumstances presented forced us to tell a little early, but with promises that not a word would be spoken outside of that confidence.

At 9 weeks we went to see the doctor and had our first sonogram. There it was, a baby (which really just looked like a bean). It was in there, with a beating heart and everything. It was so wild! It felt real, and surreal all at once. We called it "the bean", we had code words for foods that made me noxious. Jaime ran to find things to fill my unending food fickle. It was a disaster, and he was my hero!

THE BEAN

Everyday I would take it to work with me and take it home. I would sleep with it and eat with it and run errands with it. I trudged through 4 more weeks of unending nausea and discomfort silently. We still had 6 weeks of silence to endure and I was so SICK! I have never had so much trouble with food. I quickly lost 9 lbs and I felt terrible.

Finally at 12 weeks we were ready to tell the family. We make a pilgrimage to Beeville for Easter weekend, my mom and Larry in tow. We made our moms and Mita each a t-shirt reading "Worlds best Grannie" and Worlds best Nana" and of course "Worlds best Aunt".



Once they knew, the word was out and it spread like wild fire. The next week we told our Dallas family and finally the following week I told the folks at work. It was such a relief to let that cat out of the bag!

Six weeks later the grandmas made their way to Dallas for the big reveal. We would finally know what we were having. After all the potatoes and bean burritos I had eaten it was assumed that it would be a spud for a pinto bean!

I was sure it was a boy. I really wanted a boy. Everyone says "I don't care, as long as it is healthy", but not me. I wanted it to be healthy and a boy! I had bonded with this baby as if it was a boy. I dreamt that it was a boy, I knew in my heart, it was a boy. On the 20th week early on a Friday morning we made our way to Dr. Spooner's office. First the sonographer took me and Jaime in. She did some measurements, checked the heart and brain development, assured us that everything was on track. All was well and the baby was in perfect shape and size, just as we had hoped. We asked her not to tell us. We asked to to wait until the whole crew could be in the room. She went and got the rest of our gang. Kathy, Rose, Mo, Aunt Lisa and Auntie Jane all filed in with grins. She showed us the head and feet, the little heart pumping away, the she showed us the legs, the bottom and finally the little girl parts! I cried.

MAGDALENA ROSE RIVAS
aka "Maggie"

I don't know if I cried because I had so many plans already made in my mind for a boy, or if it was more. I think I was scared, I know I am nervous. A girl? Could I do this? Girls are hard work. Girls and moms have complicated relationships. Would it take me 20+ years to get into a groove with her? Would I struggle to communicate with her, would we connect? Even now I tear up just thinking about all of these things, hoping that our path could come with a few less bumps that I had with my own mom. It seemed like it took us so long to get into the groove, I don't know if I can do it all over again from the other end.

Now the reality of my little Maggie bean has set in. She is in there growing like crazy. Amazing me everyday with her new acrobatic abilities. It seemed like I would never feel her at first, now she kicks all day every day.
Jaime talks to her every night, he feels her move once in a while and we listen to her heart beat (storkradio.com) every few days. It is the greatest sound in the world. I feel more confident, more assured of my ability to do this. I feel like if I can just keep my head up and stay focused all the scary thoughts about the endless mistakes I will inevitably make will stay out of my head.

Now, she is over 12 inches long, about 1.5 lbs and changing every day. My belly is growing every day, and I have officially gained back the 9 lbs I lost plus 3 more! Only 16 more weeks until I see her face. Just the thought makes my heart fly.