Any day now...

Wow. I am officially in to my 9th month of pregnancy! I can't believe how quickly this has gone by! I have been so blessed in having an amazing pregnancy, no real complications, and not really many of the typical "pregnancy" symptoms like swelling, back ache, inability to sleep, etc. I'd say this pregnancy has really been a breeze, and I know that it doesn't happen this way for everyone so I know that I am truly blessed.


A couple updates. Since my last post I have had not one but 2 amazing Baby Showers. My first one was up north with family and close friends, I love being able to see all the people I love so dearly in one place knowing that they were all there to support our little growing family, and show Baby Esswein how much he/she is loved even before they are born. It truly was a magical day and I am so grateful to my Mom and Mother in law who worked so hard to host it for me. And if I wasn't lucky enough, a dear friend from our church her in Riverside wanted to throw me a shower as well, so this weekend I was surrounded by many other Christian Mothers in our RBCR Family who were there to show Baby Esswein how much he/she is loved. We are so very very blessed!


I am now officially 38 weeks, and am considered "Full Term" theoretically, Baby Esswein could come any day now! Thankfully, I think that we are fairly prepared, and if Baby came early I think we would be "ok" with the items we have now (I need to keep reminding myself, that woman have been having babies for centuries, with out rocking chairs, swings, breast pumps, baby monitors, etc. they are all just things!). 


We have set up our 2nd room into a "nursery/office" so one corner of the room has one of Ben's bookshelves, and his desk so he can continue to work in a space that's "all his" and in the other corner we have the crib, baby toys, dresser, etc. set up for when Baby arrives. We've got our diapers, the clothes have been washed, the crib is all set, now all we need is Baby!


Even though I can't WAIT until Baby arrives, I am still hoping to enjoy this next week (or 2) with our life with out baby. I will be working up until Friday when my Maternity Leave officially begins, so I would like to get through this week for work purposes, so I'm not cancelling session on my clients (even though I know they would all be understanding). But besides work, this week will be Ben and my 3 year wedding anniversary. I can't believe that 3 years ago we dedicated ourselves to each other in marriage, and since then have moved to So-Cal, I've started my job path in the ABA field, we lived in Europe for 9 months together, exploring all that we could explore, we've returned home to the States, moved back to So-Cal, pursued our career paths more, and are now expecting our first child. We've been through a lot these first 3 years, and I look forward to many many more to come. But this will be our last anniversary with just the 2 of us. After this it will be us and baby. I pray that we will be able to appreciate and enjoy these last precious moments together as a couple before becoming parents and a family of our own =).


I believe that's all for now, and I'm thinking the next time I write will be after Baby Esswein arrives!! Stay tuned everyone!! 

24 weeks pregnant!

You read correctly, I am now 24 weeks pregnant! At the end of this month I will be into my 3rd trimester and into the home stretch of my pregnancy. I can't believe how fast time is flying. After coming home from work today I wanted to write down a couple of things to remember, so I figured this would be the easiest way to do so.


Firstly, I've been a little stressed this week due to some changes at work and their policies. My original plan for after the baby came was to go back to work at about 23 hours a week, but due to these new changes it looks like that might not be possible and I'll probably have to go back to work full time (30+ hours/week, not including drive time from the Inland Empire to Orange County). This is obviously not ideal, but I know that God has a plan for us. He will provide for us, and we continue to pray for our little, growing family. Thanks goodness I enjoy what I do! Probably not more than I will enjoy being a Mother, but once again we will have to see what the future holds for us all.


Secondly, it is now May! Meaning that I'm only 4 weeks away from my 3rd trimester and the summer. I'm actually looking forward to the summer this year and preparing for our little one to be here. Not only that, but Ben and I have a lot of events to look forward to! For Memorial Day weekend we're going on a "Baby Moon" to the Grand Canyon, my little brother is graduating high school in early June, Ben and I are going to a wedding in San Jose for some dear friends in late June, and for the 4th of July weekend we will be in the Bay Area and I will be having my Baby Shower to see close family and friends. So May just means we're that much closer to all those things. Other than all of those, my child's cousin is due this month as well! My cousin and his wife are due in late May and I can't wait to meet the little cousin to my child (I can't believe they will only be 3 months apart!). So many exciting things to look forward to!


Thirdly, since I'm pregnant I have been tired working, driving, carrying around this child, etc. And not that I'm a great cook or anything, but I hate not being able to come home and make dinner for my husband and be the wife that I would like to be. My husband, Ben has been such an amazing and supportive partner in this pregnancy. He's been taking care of a lot of the things that I'm used to taking care of, cooking, cleaning, and overall trying to keep every thing organized. I just wanted to put out that I'm so lucky to have such an amazing, supportive, loving partner in this pregnancy such as my husband. This child is so lucky to have Ben as their father. That being said, I'm finally starting to feel like I have more energy when I come home in the evening from work, so I was finally able to make dinner tonight! Even though it's really late, I'm glad I was able to contribute to our little family again =).


Well that's all for now. I will write again soon to update every one on my completely interesting life as a pregnant woman.

Pregnancy Update

So I have really been neglecting my blog recently. Not because I've been busy, because to be honest work has not been that hectic, I've been getting into the swing of things with my schedule and being pregnant. The real reason I haven't been blogging as much is because this pregnancy is a lot more boring than I would have expected! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being pregnant, but just not much exciting has been going on.


I am now pretty far along in my 2nd trimester and half way done with this pregnancy. I've been feeling great and barely even feel pregnant. My tummy hasn't gotten too big yet, and I'm still squeezing into my regular sized jeans. If it weren't for the frequent baby movements, I wouldn't even think I was pregnant! When ever I see people they ask me how I'm feeling, and every time my answer is "Great!" (I think some might be shocked at how smoothly my pregnancy has been going).


Like I mentioned, I have been feeling the baby move and it is the coolest feeling in the world. Ben still hasn't been able to feel the baby movements, but I'm sure he will soon. It's really interesting to notice our little one's movement patterns already. He/She is very active in the morning when I wake up and in the afternoon when driving around for work. I'm hoping this pattern continues so that this baby sleeps in the night and is active in the day when they're born ;).

With all that being said, we did have an "exciting" little event this past week when I went in for my doctor's appointment. When there the doctor was trying to find the baby's heartbeat. When she found it she said it sounded really slow. She was able to find it again and it then sounded normal, but to be safe my doctor wanted me to see a Fetal Heart specialist in the next week, just to be safe. She said that this is very common and 90% of the time, a slow heartbeat ends up being no big problem. Maybe a problem with the equipment, she said she may have just caught my heartbeat first (which is slower than a fetal heartbeat), or something else. But just to be safe I went in for a "Fetal Echo" today. We had a VERY detailed ultrasound where the specialist throughly went through the anatomy of our baby, showed us the heart beating, as well as let us hear the heart beat multiple times. The specialist determined that the original reason for the slowed heart beat was because there was probably and excessive amount of pressure on the baby originally slowing the heart rate, which is totally normal. This happened when she was doing the ultrasound, and when she put a little extra pressure, the heart rate slowed down slighty. She reminded me over and over that this is perfectly normal and some babies are just a little more sensitive to pressure than others. So apparently our baby is just "sensitive" haha.

So overall, the Fetal Echo was nice, not only because we got good news, but we got to watch our little one for almost an hour as the specialist thoroughly examined the baby, and my mother was able to hear and see her first Grandchild for the first time, since she happened to be in town today.


I will try to be more diligent writing about this pregnancy to keep those who are interested updated. This baby will be here before we know it!

A job that's worth the hard parts...

Due to my new pregnancy I've been seeing Doctor's, Nurses, and Midwifes a lot recently. Every time I'm at the doctor's office, it seems to be someone new and they try to get to know me a little by asking me what I do for work. Almost every time I say "I do ABA therapy with kids who have autism," there is some sort of grimace, and a "wow, that's gotta be tough." They are not wrong. It is tough, but the good days always outweigh the bad (which is what I tell them). My job is so rewarding, and even though I still plan on pursuing  a slightly different career of Speech Pathology in the future, I want to work with the same population because it's something I enjoy so much. Weeks like the one I just had remind me of that.


One of the reasons why I love THIS job specifically at the company that I am currently at, is because my superiors trust me. They know I'm not incompetent, and that I know what I'm doing. I'm not constantly being babied or reprimanded for things that I am doing (unlike my previous company). They allow me to be creative and use different methods for these kids to get them to generalize the information we are trying to teach them. That alone, knowing that my supervisors have trust in me makes me feel more confident in my work. When I'm not always second guessing myself, I can focus on the kids and their progress which always seems to help. Which I think is one of the reasons why I am seeing so much progress in the kids I work with.



When working with individuals who have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), any little victory is a huge one. Daily things that we take for granted can be really tough for these kiddo's and my job is to try to make these things easier for them and do-able in general. For one of my 5 year old kids, we're trying to help him with letter and number recognition (you never realize how many things in every day life we need basic numbers and letters for until you see a kids struggle with these aspects) and attending to things like school work. This kid is a really bright and creative guy, and just doesn't do well sitting at a desk all day learning from work sheets. This week, I tried a couple different things with him. One was all my husband's idea. When shopping he found some "Scrabble Cheez-It Crackers" where all the crackers had letters on them, and he thought this would be good for work. He was right. I took those crackers to work and my kiddo easily recognized 9 letters that I asked him to. Seeing him struggle with his worksheets, to thriving in a more natural setting was amazing. Even with his numbers, I recently found a "color by numbers" which he loves to do and is great at. He makes progress it seems in leaps and bounds each time I see him and I am so proud of him.


Another one of my newer kiddos is 4 years old, and new to the program, but even he is making dramatic changes. From the first day I saw him where he wouldn't let me touch what he was playing with and throwing toys at me when I did, to cleaning up when asked (the first time) and when getting frustrated he simply walks to a corner and sits there by himself (we still need to work on him appropriately dealing with his frustrating by either asking for time alone, or finishing the task first, but still a vast improvement). Even seeing his mom learn from how we phrase things, and how we react to his problem behaviors. She's implementing as much as she can with him at home when we're not there, and even with her other kids! Seeing everyone grow from this process is why I do what I do!

Here are some pictures one of my kids drew of his own Super Hero. On the left is Super Strong Man on the earth (not quite sure what he's saying, but since this kid knows independently how to write only a few letters, he just puts them all together and pretends they say something haha). On the right is Super Strong Man getting the "Bad Guys" to put them in jail.

Telling Our Families

Well after a LONG Christmas break of hiding our exciting news, we decided that we could come back to the Bay Area to tell our family once we had been to the doctors to make sure everything was going well. We had our first appointment when I was 9 weeks along, and got to see our little peanut for the first time, and even heard the heart beat. Our little kiddo was bouncing and moving around like it was nobody's business! After talking with the doctor and after she told me that I was very low risk for my pregnancy. We started figuring out how we were going to tell our families!


I had always dreamed of telling our families by having a picture frame with our ultrasound and giving it to them as gifts. I was able to find some awesome picture frames to give our families and thankfully we were going to the Bay Area to celebrate my Mom's birthday and Ben's sister's birthday, so we needed gifts for them any way (that way the gifts didn't seem too suspicious). For my Mom's present, we put our ultra sound in the picture frame and the picture frame said "Coming Soon" on the bottom. When we arrived late Friday night to my parents house I quickly gave my Mom her present and told her to open it right away (we couldn't wait any longer!). At first she protested, but I was persistent and she opened it. Needless to say, both my mom and dad were very excited, but at first were shocked. We sat down and talked about everything, and then Ben and I went to sleep because we had to be up at his parents house bright and early the next morning to tell them our news.


Since we were going to be celebrating Ben's sister's birthday we got her the present to open. Her picture frame was a picture of her daughter and our niece (Azaileeya) with a picture of our ultrasound right next to it and on the bottom of the frame it said "Cousins". We gave it to Moriah and she opened it quickly, but didn't quite understand. Ben's family looked at the picture and it took them a second to get to the "Cousins" part of the picture frame. When they did they all laughed gave out hugs and congratulated us. Moriah told us later she thought that we had Azaileeya's ultrasound and put it in the picture frame, before she got to the part that says "Cousins".

Finally! Our parents knew and we were able to tell our extended family, close friends and church family, which we did slowly over a couple of weeks. Now every one knew our big news!!

We've got our Bun in the Oven

So now that we have been able to tell all our family (and that it's been announced on facebook), we can now openly talk about our new little bundle of joy! I will be keeping this blog as a "memento" so to speak through out my pregnancy. So that in years to come I can look back and remember all the little things that I may have forgotten in the years pass. Much like my blog from living abroad. 

I figured I'd start this blog off by talking about when Ben and I found out! Well, our story starts back in December before Christmas time...I had a feeling that I might be pregnant, since I had been exhausted and had a lack of an appetite, but I had originally figured it was due to a newly full schedule waking up at 5:45 to leave my house at 6:30 to get to Newport Beach by 8:00 for my first client, and not getting home until after 6:00 in the evening. With my busy schedule of sessions, driving, and more I figured I was just starting to wear a little, but something just didn't feel right. So on my way home from work one night I decided I'd take a home pregnancy test, just to put my suspicions to rest. I got home and quickly took the test, and after the longest 3 minutes of my life, I saw a faint little pink line and began to flip out (but not too loudly as to not concern Ben...I had a plan for how I was going to tell him later). I gathered myself up, and acted normal until Ben took Murray out for his evening walk. 

Now, I had a couple minutes to get together Ben's "Christmas gift" to let him know the big news. I had already purchased a set of neutral "onesies" to give Ben as a gift for when I did find out I was pregnant (since we had been talking about having a baby recently). So I quickly wrapped them up to give Ben when he arrived back from his walk with Murray. 

When he got home I quickly gave him his present and told him to open it right then and that I thought we should exchange gifts tonight. So he unwrapped it, and at first didn't seem to understand. I explained to him that I was pregnant, but it was still very early. He began to smile, and gave me a hug and a kiss, and we immediately started talking about when we were going to tell the rest of our family. Since we were going home for the Christmas break that weekend, we decided that it was too early to tell our family, so we were in for a tough 2 weeks or so to spend with all of our family and keep our mouths shut about our big news. 

We were home for almost 2 weeks spending time with our families and had to act like nothing was suspicious. Although, looking back I don't think we were as subtle as maybe we were hoping. Constantly turning down wine at Christmas time was definitely out of character for me, and I was exceptionally sleepy through out the holidays. It also didn't help that at one point Ben even pointed out at dinner with his family "Katie, you can't have that it has alcohol in it!" Thank goodness no one REALLY figured it out! Unfortunately we didn't get to tell all of our extended family in person, even though we had multiple get togethers and it would have been the perfect situation, but we knew that we wanted to wait a little while longer to tell everyone that we loved. 

After telling Ben, we celebrated with some Martinelli's! Sorry for the messy table! 

My Job(s)

What a wonderful Saturday! The weather has been overcast all morning with some light rain, Ben and I have been relaxing, hanging with Murray, getting out our Christmas stuff, and running errands. These are the kinds of Saturdays that I cherish. So in this month of Thanksgiving I would like to say that I am thankful for these quiet days I get to spend with my little family.

Of course, the only way I fully get to appreciate these quiet Saturdays is because I am so busy with work during the regular week. This week was busy, even with the holiday on Monday I still saw one of my clients, and had a rough week with another kid. Even though some of these days are rough, I really am truly grateful to our gracious Lord for providing me with not one, but 2 jobs. Granted, I'm trying to move away from one so that I can work for only one company full time, but I'm grateful for the jobs that I have.

As I stated in my other blog, I started working for a new company recently, and yesterday I had my 90-day evaluation. Mostly good comments, with a few "try to improve" areas, but overall I was satisfied with the results. I am so excited for the opportunities at this new company and my boss even texted me this week saying that she's going to try to get me to be a full-time employee (30-32 hours/week) by December! I am so excited and this means so many big things! I will be now getting reimbursed more for drive time, I'll only be working for one company, and in this company there's a possibility for more growth and I can see myself staying there for a long time.

It's been a while since I've had this nice of a work week, and it makes me remember why I chose this profession to begin with. I've always wanted to help others, learn more about autism, and try to make a difference in these families lives. For a while I wasn't feeling like that was what I was doing. I was barely a babysitter, day after day, just putting out fires left and right, and not being able to really do my job. However, this week I saw a lot of progress in most of my kids, and seeing them learn and grasp what we're trying to teach is the most rewarding feeling ever! Especially when you know that you had something to do with it. I am so excited to see what the future has in store for me with work, and I am so proud to say that I am an ABA Therapist!