Lee and I on top of the Creperie Restaurant downtown. That's part of the Santa Catalina convent behind us, with Chachani in the very background.

 
And since that picture above is a beautiful one, but doesn't quite capture the size of the belly, here are two we took in front of the apartment yesterday. The zipped-jacket-got-it-together look, and the letting-it-all-hang-out look. I'm 27 weeks and 3 days here!

And a sonogram picture of our baby's face! I think it is more and more precious every time I look at it. We have it hanging on the fridge right now. That's his left palm on the right there, and maybe his right palm to the left. His body is actually out of range; that blob on the left is one of my organs, I think! Once I get a baby picture of me via email from my mama, I'll put up both Lee's and my baby pictures to see what kind of mix we'll get! 

We got to find out the sex on Friday! It's a BOY! We are so shocked. We thought we were having a girl! It's almost like finding out I'm pregnant all over again; I have to stop thinking bows and dresses and baking and dolls, and start thinking race cars, dinosaurs, and airplanes! (Airplanes especially because of who I'm married to!) But we are so excited!

In the sonogram, actually when this picture was taken, we could see his little jaw moving up and down - he was sucking his thumb! It was the most adorable thing I've seen!

I'm a really good example of the "What to Expect When You're Expecting" mom. I'm not near as nauseous anymore, I feel more pregnant now and that makes me so happy! I am still having a lot of nosebleeds, though. But it feels so good to be back home after such a long visit to the states now that I'm feeling up to "nesting!" I just want to make our apartment feel as homey as possible!

Oh, and I'll be 19 weeks tomorrow! When we had the sonogram, baby looked about a week older than he's supposed to be! He's a healthy little thing!

Last week we held a pastors/leaders conference across town. Lee and I decided to stay in the hotel with everybody in order to be closer to everyone and because it's just fun to stay in hotels sometimes. After the first night there, I went back to our apartment to get our external hardrive and some extra pillows.

I left the taxi down on the street and went up to the apartment. I had to go in the laundry room door because our key stopped working in our front door for some reason. As I walked through the laundry room and kitchen and into the family room towards the bedrooms, the smell of body odor stopped me in my tracks. It was like the smell of the poor taxi drivers who either aren't accostomed to taking showers, or work so much that they don't have time, and the smell fills the taxi but you don't find out until you've already gotten in and it's too late.

Now let me just explain something about my sense of smell:
1) I've been known in the past to be able to smell people in the next room when I didn't know they were there.
2) Ever since I've been pregnant, I've had a sense of super-smell. I'm sure other pregnant or used-to-be-pregnant people can relate. I couldn't stand it when Lee would come out of the shower smelling like shampoo, and I still don't like to cook on the stove because of the smell of the gas, which didn't used to bother me.

So, I went back outside and called Lee on the cellphone. I wanted to at least be talking to someone if I walked into the house and was attacked or something. I told him I was freaked out because I smelled a stinky man, and he thought it was funny! So I walked back in, talking loudly to scare the man away and walking slowly into each doorway to check it out. I quickly grabbed our pillows and the hardrive and ran out the front door.

After all of that, there wasn't actually anybody there. I guess it was just my sense of super-smell overreacting to a musty apartment that had been shut up for more than a day. On top of that, I had to pay the taxi driver extra because I had taken so long going up to get my stuff!

Yesterday, I had to go the Migraciones office to renew my tourist visa. I think it probably would have been just as much or less of a hassle to have stayed illegally for 30 more days, but I guess that would have made me feel really nervous in the airport when I leave the country. Plus, it's just illegal, and it's against my ethics. I think.

Yesterday marked 90 days since I've been back in the country. That's the longest period of time I'm allowed to stay without leaving to some other country and reentering. Since I had no plans of leaving, I had to make a visit to our neighborhood immigrations office and pay $30 to be able to stay 30 more days. And it just happens that we have been planning to go back to the states on the 5th of March which is exactly 30 days from yesterday!

Now, the immigrations office does happen to be located in our neighborhood, but that doesn't mean every neighborhood has one. Actually, I think the office by our house is one of the only such offices south of Lima! So, we lucked out on that.

We did not luck out on customer service, however. (Or immigrant service?) The lady continued doing whatever she had been working on the whole time we were in her office. We were in and out three times, as she made us first go pay the $30 at a bank, bring back the receipts, go out and make copies of the receipts we just got and a form, fill out the form, go out and make copies (at our own expense, of course) of the forms we just filled out, and get frowned at as we leave with a new stamp in my passport.

The irony of it all is that if I had not gotten a new stamp in my passport, I would have had to pay $1 for every day I remained in the country illegally. And that just would have happened to have added up to $30. So why didn't I just stay illegally? Ethics, I suppose, and nerves.

Hopefully, applying for our baby to have Peruvian citizenship won't take too much more effort than renewing a tourist visa.??.?. It would be nice if we didn't have to worry about visas or carnets (resident id's) or passports for our little one. But I'm not holding my breath for Peru to make that an easy process.

Right when I found out I was pregnant, I started doing tons of research on the internet about check-ups and nutrition and what to be concerned about and what not. The thing is that everything is in English and I have no idea how to translate most of it into Spanish!

Well, I searched and searched online to find a reference for a good doctor here in Arequipa, who maybe speaks English. Well, after about half an hour, I found embarazada.com (which means, pregnant.com). Well, that was pretty straightforward! I wish I had thought of that sooner.

I found a lady doctor named Janet Lozada, whom Paty recognized right away. Her office is located in a clinic only 15 minutes from here, and 5 or fewer minutes from the Styron's house. So, I figured if I needed to, I could sleep over at their house every night when I'm about due, and be able to get to the clinic in a flash when it happens! Good plan.

I went to see the doctor with Paty. Paty doesn't speak much English, but she has a good sense of what I do and don't understand. So when I look at her and shrug, she repeats everything to me very slowly, using little words. When we finally got to see a nurse (I say finally, but really it was only like 10 minutes, which is a miracle down here!) all I could understand was hCG and folic acid. I nodded, but afterward Paty explained everything to me. The clinic was very hot, which makes me worry, but the nurse was nice, so I was encouraged!

We headed down to the lab where I handed a lady a piece of paper with B-HCG scribbled on it and she asked me to have a seat. I sat down and opened my peanut butter sandwich, and right when I had taken my first bite, she called my name. (I wonder why she asked me to have a seat in the first place!) I'm sure I smelled like a sticky little kid when I sat down to get my blood taken, but you gotta do what you gotta do when you're prego!

I watched her closely as she was getting ready to stick me, and I prayed that God would keep me safe. She didn't wear any gloves, but she did pull the needle out of a sealed plastic wrapping. She finally found a vein and stuck me and kinda funneled my blood into the vile. When it was all over I owed a little over $10 and was told to return at 5:00 to pick up the results!

We picked up the results and my levels compared to an average person are more on par with being more than six weeks pregnant! I'm only five weeks, so I am wondering if that could mean twins... We couldn't drop off the results at the doctor's office because there were too many people there, but we called them and told them the results this morning and they said they'd call back over the weekend to give me an appointment. (Of course, I didn't call them myself. I had Paty do it!)

So, everything seems kinda less professional here than in the States, but so far so good. I'm hoping they'll give me a sonogram when I go in next week! That would be awesome.

Other than that, my parents sent me 3 dozen roses! I was very surprised and it made my day a lot brighter!