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!

November...

As some of you may know, I started my Blog "Life Abroad" as Ben and I moved to Austria last year. Since that time, a lot has changed and I have been grateful for every minute of it. I wanted to blog about my experience living in a different country so far away, and I was so lucky to have the technology that we do so that I could share my experiences with all my friends and family back home. Now that I'm back in the States, I've realized that the adventure of my life isn't over, it's just beginning! So I figured, I try to get back into blogging, updating those who are interested on my life today and as it goes. I've titled this blog "Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness", not to imply that I'm not "happy", but just because I feel like these are some of the most important things in our daily lives. Well, now that you know the back story, let me catch up on what's happened since we've arrived back in the States.

I believe my last blog was about my trip to London to visit my cousin Kimmy and my travel home back in May. So it's been over 5 months since writing my last blog, and boy has a lot happened since then. 

Ben arrived back in the States in June, and for the summer we stayed at my parents house while we looked for a new place to live in Southern California. I was working at a Summer School at a local Christian School, and Ben spent most of his time organizing his thoughts and notes for his dissertation. Over the summer I began to look for jobs in Southern California, and God was gracious to give me not one, but two opportunities for work. The company that I had previously been working for had offered me my job back, which was amazing, but since I didn't know if that was a "for sure" option, I applied to other jobs as well. One was at a company my mom had told me about. I looked on their website, and quickly filled out an application, hoping that maybe something would come of it. I didn't really think much of it, because they were asking for people with a little more experience than I had, but I thought it was worth the shot. 

The next day I received an e-mail about setting up a phone interview, then an in-person interview. One thing lead to another and I was offered a position there. I immediately took it because I really believed in their philosophy, it was a growing division so there was room for growth in my position, and it paid more. However, it was only part-time to start so currently I am working at both companies. It's amazing how God provides for us! 

So since we moved back to Southern California in August, Ben has been writing his dissertation and making great progress, and I have been working 2 part-time jobs. It's been hectic trying to get back into these lives, but we're so blessed to have these opportunities. 

Now, coming into November. I've seen a lot of people posting on Facebook and Blogs, writing about something they are thankful for each day of the month. Now, in the words of the wise, Youtube sensation "Sweet Brown", "ain't nobody got time for that!" well, at least I don't seem to. So I will be posting as many as I can to discuss what I am thankful for, but probably not every day. So the first thing I am amazingly grateful for is my amazing husband, Ben. 

As I stated, previously I am currently working 2 part-time jobs, and in between them I am driving all over Southern California. I work with a tough population of children with special needs and come with scratches on my arms, bruises on my legs, and some times a really bummed out attitude. But, Ben is always at home waiting to comfort me and listen to my stories of the day. He comforts me with his love, and prays for me when he knows I'm having a rough day. He encourages me to go back to work, reminding me that this won't be my forever job. And I love him for that. He is amazingly supportive. He knows that when I come home from work I'm usually drained and want to just lay down, so he lets me just relax. 

I had this morning off since my first client had a dentist appointment, so I was able to stay home while Ben went off to campus for work. After he left I got into a "cleaning rut", I started vacuuming  doing the dishes, starting laundry, cleaning off the dining room table, etc. and I realized I haven't really done this kind of stuff in a while, but it's still been clean. Ben selflessly has been keeping up on most of the housework, while I've been working. He does the dishes with out complaining or telling me to "do my share", he offers to cook dinner (which is nice because he is a better cook than I), he vacuums, takes Murray out for two walks a day, all while working himself, and doing his dissertation. I am so blessed to have a husband who is so selfless, and willing to help out as much as he does.

Besides his willingness to help, I am so proud of him. My husband has been in Graduate School for years now, and it hasn't been easy. Yes, we got to live abroad because of my husband Graduate work, but it was as I just stated. Work. He was there for work. We had an amazing time, but in the end he was there for his research. All in the name of history. He is so passionate about history, and I know one day he'll make an amazing Professor. I am so blessed to have a husband who is so passionate about what he does, and has the drive that he does. He's followed his dream, and I love him for that. 

So, for now, I think that is enough. But hopefully, there will be more to come soon! =)