Back to Cinci!!!!

As many have already heard, we are moving back to Cincinnati!!  Jeff accepted the job with Ethicon Women's Health and Urology and the job will begin back in our favorite city!  We are so excited to get to spend more time with family and friends and even enjoy next football season in town!  Our season tickets for UC football will get good use this year!  We will be making the move during the last weekend of May, so we have a very busy month ahead of us!!

"It's gonna be a soccer player"...

It's been a crazy week, but I knew that I was overdue for posting a picture of my growing belly. Jeff is currently on his way home from New York after a follow up interview with Ernst and Young. He spent Monday and Tuesday of this week in Dayton, OH where he went on a sales ride with Ethicon. I'm soooo ready to know what's going to happen in the next month!! Hopefully we'll know more next week!

Today I'm at 22 weeks and here's what 22 weeks looks like!

Baby Quiz!

In baby news...he/she is getting bigger! Today I came to the realization that my innie bellybutton is now beginning to transition to an outie! Crazy! Today I am at 21 weeks and I feel great. I feel completely normal except for the fact that my clothes aren't fitting quite like they used to. I have bought some maternity pants, but I am able to still wear my shirts. I have even squeezed into some of my pants with the help of the Bellaband. For those of you who don't know what that is...it's an elastic band that you can wear around your waist to keep your unbuttoned pants up. :) I pretty much wear the Bellaband with all of the pants that fit me pre-baby. I begun to feel the baby kick around 16 weeks, but now I'm convinced that he/she is having a boxing match at all different times of the day. This weekend when we were sitting in Atlanta on a layover, I felt the strongest kick that I have felt yet. They are definitely happening more and more and they are getting stronger. It's a very difficult feeling to describe to Jeff, but the perfect example came up this weekend. He had a muscle twitch in his arms and you could actually see it pulse. I said "That's it!". That is the closest thing that he could feel that even compares to the baby kicking.
I saw that one of our friends started a baby pool. I thought that it was a cute idea, so I went ahead and started one also. You can visit the link http://bebepool.com/steph1322 and submit your votes. You can take your guess on the date of birth, weight, length and name.

The beginning of the end...

As I've mentioned before, Jeff is getting out of the Army. His last official day is May 4th. First of all, it's amazing how fast 5 years has gone. I can remember the days of ROTC when I used to see Jeff on campus walking around in uniform...hard to believe that was 7 years ago! I think that it will be a huge adjustment for him, but I think that it's going to be a good change. Although we were lucky and only dealt with one deployment, I can't imagine having him gone considering we have a baby on the way. I know many women who have given birth with their husbands in Iraq or Afghanistan and I can't even imagine how hard that was for them. It's so sad when I think of all of the husbands that come home and haven't seen their newborns in about a year. So much happens in that time and I don't want Jeff to miss a moment!
We went to the Cameron-Brooks career conference this past weekend in Charlotte. For any military officer that is thinking about getting out of the Army and transitioning to the corporate world, I could not recommend a better route to take than with this company. Jeff has been hard at work for 14 months...reading books, having study groups, practicing interview skills...all in preparation for this conference. Although it was hard work, it paid off significantly! We arrived in Charlotte on Friday night and sat through a lot of meetings beginning bright and early on Saturday morning. The meetings basically consisted of interview preparation and briefings about the companies that they were going to be interviewing with. On Monday and Tuesday, Jeff had the opportunity to interview with 10 different companies, including 3 different divisions of Johnson & Johnson, Ernst and Young, BMC Software, Abbott Diabetes Care and Aldi. Most of the jobs involve surgical device sales, management or consulting. Even though I didn't go through the interviews, I still felt as exhausted as Jeff! I helped him prepare for the interviews by asking him questions and helping him research about the companies. I think that after Jeff went through the first interview, the stress level went down a bit. He felt very confident coming out of that interview and I think that that set the tone for the rest of the day! When we woke up on Tuesday, Jeff found out that not only did he have his remaining 5 interviews, he also already had 2 follow ups from companies that he interviewed with the day before. It was very exciting to know that Jeff made as good of an impression on these companies that he thought he had (he had another follow up Tuesday afternoon also). So after 13 interviews in 31 hours, we ranked the companies in the order that we would want them. We had to take many things into consideration including locations. These companies range in location...Ohio, NYC, Chicago, Washington D.C., Michigan, and Boston. Jeff begins traveling on Monday for follow ups with the Johnson & Johnson and Ernst and Young jobs. Very exciting time, but soooo stressful because we don't know where we will end up in the next month! Hopefully we will be able to make a decision in the next couple of weeks and start to prepare for a move.