Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

I thought some people might want to read some of the recent news articles about some of the projects I have been working on. I have been meaning to post the one on my senior design project for some time. This project has been different than most since I am both the customer (since I work at Schweitzer) and the student. The author of the article contacted me a few months back about doing an article on some of my work at SEL. My work at SEL was confidential but my boss thought it would be a good idea for him to do an article on my group's senior design project. I wrote the author an overview on the project. So when you see quotes that say "SEL says..." that is really me speaking. The same magazine (Automation World) should be doing an article on another project that I have been working on so stay tuned.

Senior Design Project

This next article came out this past week. It is about a Chinese Club that I recently started on campus.

Chinese Culture Club


Happy Reading!

T-Minus One Month, and counting

Officially one month from tomorrow...although she's welcome anytime after May 8th (Jeremy will be done with finals and Maeli will be full term). Her kicks are getting stronger and she must have dropped at least a little because for the past few days I've really enjoyed being able to breath. At the next appointment (next Wednesday) we do the strep B test and check to see where we're at with things. We've got one more baby shower this coming Saturday, although I can't really think of anything else we need, at least not right away, but its nice to have so many people excited for us.

Jeremy is really anxious, just tonight he was talking about snuggling a girl in each arm pretty soon. I'm getting anxious too because as soon as I can lay on my belly I'm getting a massage! We're signed up to pre-register at the hospital so we won't have to worry about paper work when the big day arrives. I can't imagine trying to remember what year I had tonsils out while in labor. I'm really excited about our hospital, everything I've heard has been positive, and I think they'll help to make it a great experience.

We're getting into crunch time with finals and all that. WSU is out next week and my last day there will be that Friday. U of I is a week later, but all of Jeremy's finals are on that Monday, so he'll be done soon too. The just one more semester of Undergrad! WooHoo. He's found so many new interests this semester, its making Grad school a harder choice, but we're pretty sure we're going for a masters, its just a question of which program/specialty Jeremy wants to be part of. I'm so proud of him. He's worked so hard and I know that having all these new family responsibilities has made life so much harder. But he's been to every doctor's appointment with me, we only missed one baby class (and that was my decision) and he hasn't complained once about how grumpy I am as a pregnant lady. I figured out that women have to carry the babies because we'd never put up with men if they went as crazy as we do during pregnancy. And only once has my darling husband commented on my size...and it was true, I really was "bigger today than yesterday."

The weather has turned beautiful and we even went on a bike ride. Four-slow but still prideful- miles eight months pregnant...I'm pretty pumped with pride. Pretty soon we'll put the garden in and it'll really be spring!

Caught 'em; Cleaned 'em; Cooked 'em

Beautiful Weather

Our beautiful weather did not last long. This is what we came home to on Tuesday after work. Yuck! I know that it’ll be a matter of weeks before I’m complaining about the heat, but seriously…its April. What is going on!
I realized today that we totally missed taking a picture on the actual 8 month mark. So this is the 33 1⁄2 week mark photo. I think it looks like I have a basketball stuck up my shirt, Jeremy says that really is what I look like, not just in the picture. How much bigger can she get in 6 1⁄2 weeks? If anyone wants to join the pool of when she’ll be born its time to get in. It’s a dollar per guess. Winner take all. I have a gut feeling that I’ll have to be induced, that’s all I’m saying. Official due date remains May 27th.

Lets See...

Wow! Its been a long time since I’ve blogged, and a lot has been going on, I’m just a slacker. Lets see…

Jeremy had a great time visiting his sister in Utah. I’ll try to get him to blog about it, but he’s getting busier and busier. Although I was wishing horribly that I would’ve gone with him when he left, sitting in the tiny plane from Lewiston to Salt Lake does not sound fun right now. He enjoyed getting to go to Conference in the Conference center, and some of our friends here took me in, so we both had a good weekend. He made it back safe and sound despite a little truck trouble at the airport.

It snowed here on Monday, but we’ve had beautiful weather since then, so I’m dealing with it. We had our last “monthly” appointment on Wednesday and all is well. Maeli is head down and the doctor assumes that she’ll stay that way until party time. We got to palpate her head through my belly which was kind of fun. Now we can keep track of which way she’s laying. She didn’t seem to like us poking around on her though; she was pretty mean to me for a few days after that. But all is well and going as planned. 7 weeks left…can’t wait. For the rest of the month we see the Doctor every 2 weeks, and then switch to every week.


We were so excited when Dannell and the boys made it here on Thursday. It was so fun to have company, and the weather cooperated so we could go to the park and play. Trevor and Jeremy got to ride bikes, and we all played an amazing game of horseshoes. Girls against boys and I’m proud to say that Dannell and I wasted them. I wasn’t very good about taking pictures while they were here, but I did get a few. I liked the one of Tyler sideways better than right side up, so I left it. The only one I have of Dannell has my really messy kitchen in it too, so I’m not posting that, but she was really here too. We had so much fun; we hardly ever get to spend any one on one time with anyone. It seems like trips to Oregon are always crammed full of tiny visits with everyone. It was great to have a longer visit, and we hope they had a great time and will come see us again soon. And our door is always open to any one else that misses us.

Our Easter was good. We had to make a great effort to be on time to church this morning (I don’t know why its still hard, even at 11:00, but we’re always cutting it too close) because Jeremy was asked to stand in on blessing a baby. Our friends, the Johnson’s, have a cute little guy named Caden who promised to teach Maeli his secret to sleeping for 4 hours at a time. They’re really great people, and Jeremy was really excited to get to be part of such a special event. We even got invited to the family dinner after church, so we got real Easter dinner without having to cook it. I love it!

Our next few weeks are crammed full of meetings and stuff as we try desperately to survive the last 4 weeks of the semester. Jeremy is ready for summer break and a change of pace and I’m really ready for him to have a few less things to stress about. And we’re both getting pretty anxious to meet our daughter.

My Sweetie Pie

I have to blog about my wonderful husband really quick. Earlier today I was talking about how wonderful he’s been during the pregnancy and I said, “I don’t know what I’d do without him.” My co-worker said something funny about how without him I wouldn’t be in this mess anyway. True, but I was thinking about that. I can’t get too sentimental in explaining my pondering or I’ll start to cry. Jeremy needs just a few hours to work on school stuff and all will be lost if he hears me sniffling away in the living room, even if it is just over blogging. But I have the best husband in the world--for me. I am continually amazed at how well he knows me, and how he ALWAYS knows the right thing to say (not that he ALWAYS says the right thing, but when he doesn’t, he knows what he should have said). I know that there are so many things about me that he thinks are so weird, but he just goes with it. He has been so sweet and so thoughtful. He bought me a nesting present. Significant for a few reasons. He got me a cordless screwdriver (it’s a girl one though) so that I can indulge in my decorating because his drill is a little heavy for me, and really hard to access with a pregnant belly. When we first got married we had a “discussion” about hanging pictures and why a wife is completely capable of doing it herself. True. So I do a lot of the “decorative” things that only require a hole or a few screws to hold it together. But now when I get into nesting (Not quite there yet) I can just go to town.

I’ve done a horrible job of explaining how wonderful he is. I’m just excited to be married to him. I’m touched by how thrilled he is about every little kick and bump the baby throws his way, and how anxious he is to snuggle his little daughter. It’s seriously killing him to have to wait weeks to see her. He’s so clam and confident that we can handle parenthood, and so supportive and positive that I can handle getting her into this world…it just puts me completely at ease to know that he’ll be with me. I’m so glad that he’s mine, and that I get to be his.

Well we’ve almost recovered from Spring Break. Vacation was wonderful. On the way to Oregon we stopped at Pampa Pond so Jeremy could fish for a little while. He caught two trout, and we took them with us to my parents house where we grilled them--he ate them. It was nice to spend some time outside, and I was truly convinced that Spring was here until we woke up this morning to discover that it was snowing outside. I’ve had just about enough of this winter. I used the phrase “March comes in like a Lion and out like a Lamb” today, and no one had ever heard of it before. Is that an Oregon thing? There isn’t any lambing going on here in the Palouse, that’s for sure.

The Baby shower was so fun and Sheila did a great job of putting things together; she’s for sure one of my favorite sister-in-laws…in the top 6 anyway. I was amazed at how many people came, and it was so wonderful to get to see so many of my buddies. I wish I could have visited more with everyone individually, but we would have been there for days. Maeli made quite a haul, and I seriously don’t think we could have put one more thing in the car. She is pretty much set. I know that babies are one of those things that women go crazy over, but I truly feel blessed to have such a strong support base. I was thinking about it during the shower (okay, actually it was afterwards while I was helping to “clean out” the chocolate fountain) how wonderful it is to have literally dozens of women that I could call at anytime for any reason and not feel at all strange. I don’t know how anyone would make it through life without friends and family. Anyway, I feel a lot more prepared for our little chicky to arrive. We could get her home from the hospital, and survive for at least a few days with what we have in the house, now if I could only find where to put it all. But it’s kind of a load off to know we could handle at least that part of parenthood. On the flip side, our childbirth class has me a little less anxious for the blessed event. We just watched the movies of the births, which didn’t really bother me too much. But now I’m realizing that it’s really time to decide about drugs and all that…I guess I’m realizing that it’s getting close. Give me a few weeks and it won’t be close enough, but right now I’ve just kind of settled into my comfort zone with being pregnant. I pretty much have it figured out, and I’d be fine to hang out like this for a while, except the rotten kid keeps growing and we’re quickly running out of places for her to go. So I know she’ll have to come out…then it’s a whole new ball game.

And speaking of being comfortable with being pregnant, my sweetie pie bought me a rocking chair for my birthday, so now I’m officially ready to be a mom. Well, I think I’m officially ready to have people visit me and rock my baby to sleep, but the chair is really comfy. Un-officially, I look at pictures like this and can’t believe how huge I am with 8 ½ weeks to go.

The Name Game

So far, choosing a name has definitely been the hardest part of parenting (although, we really haven’t had to do too much). Before we ever got pregnant, we were talking about baby names and Jeremy said that he liked the Chinese name pronounced “may-lee” which means “beautiful”. I thought it was pretty cute, so we kind of left it the back of our minds. When we found at that we were having a baby, we decided to go with it, but spelling was the hard part. The Chinese way is totally unpronounceable in English (in my opinion) so we chose the “Mae” because it’s a common middle name on Jeremy’s side of the family (his mom and his sister) and the “li” because it looks cute. The Opal is after my Great-Grandma Opal (Aunt Opie can have some credit too, but only what doesn’t make Mavis upset) who is our oldest living relative, and therefore deserves some recognition.

Unless little chicky comes out looking like someone else, that’s the name we’re going with. We’re already calling her Maeli, and it seems to fit her. She’s a wiggly thing and seems to really like to dance to country music. She also likes riding in her Daddy’s old truck, and doing summersaults at bed time. She does not like how squished she is getting in my belly and has been trying to escape out my belly button for the past few weeks. I think she plans on just kicking her way out, which is sounding more and more like a better alternative from the stories I’ve been hearing about labor and delivery.

Maeli Opal McLain

Baby Story

So on Monday we had our Doctor's appointment. I drank the orange glucose stuff (it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, I've had cough syrup that tastes a lot worse) and off we went. Normal stuff, check the heart beat (150) and Dr. Hall asked if we were concerned about anything. We had decided that I would be the one to plead for another ultrasound because it’s harder to resist a pregnant lady. So I said that if there was ANYWAY for us to find out if its a boy or girl that we'd really love to know as we're going to Oregon for a baby shower and it would make life so much easier for the Grandmas and Aunts and everyone. So the Doctor has me lay down and measures my belly. He says something along the lines of how even though everything looks good, we'll say I'm 32 and that's too big for my dates, so we better do another ultrasound. So I have my blood drawn for the glucose test (which turned out totally normal) and we made the appointment for the Ultrasound. They were able to get us in Tuesday morning at 8:00.

So we go home on Monday, we decide not to tell anyone that we're having another ultrasound since last time we had everyone all excited and ended up with no answer. So Monday night, I made a deal with Baby that if it would cooperate and show us its goods, I promised not to post any pictures or its privates on-line. Tuesday we get up, I start filling my bladder as requested (and someone told me that if you drink caffeine before an ultrasound the baby moves a lot more and its easier to see everything, so I had a Dr. Pepper with my toast) and we head to the hospital. The tech starts and asks what the purpose is and we tell her the story. She said, "Well its pretty obvious, but I have to see it 6 times before I tell you what it is." She's going along and freezing pictures for us to take home, we see our baby being all cute and then she types on the screen, "ITS A GIRL!!!!"

She looks really good, but she's already 3 pounds 5 ounces, which measures her due on May 17th. But the Doctor hasn't changed my date or anything. The tech only looked at the heart and the fluid, and both of those look good. Jeremy's already pretty smitten with his little daughter. I've caught him gazing at the ultrasound pictures more than once, and he's been singing a lot since we found out. He didn't even flinch when I made a joke about never getting away from a house full of women. We very excited to know that it’s a girl, and that she seems totally healthy. And it looks like she'll probably be built like a Brame...nice and "sturdy."