Be still.

This past weekend my maid-of-honor and I threw a baby shower for an old roommate, RKO (far right). It was so much fun! Oddly enough, 4 of us in attendance were pregnant (the two of us in the middle share the same due date). Needless to say, hormones ran high and there was much more "ooo-ing" and "awww-ing" than normal. Ha ha. Pregnant women can be so silly.

At any rate, we are all looking forward to celebrating the birth of RKO's first baby! :-)

Today, however, has found me in bed. :-/ Somewhere I picked up a really bad chest cold. Boo. I'm hoping it will be better before M and I leave for the Buckeye State (and our first baby shower) on Friday! I can't wait to see my Mommy and Daddy!

Forgetfulness

It's certainly not my intention to post only about pregnancy or baby-related items. But what's a girl to do when most of the obscure blogworthy things that take place in her day-to-day life seem to somehow be connected to one of those two topics?

It's only fair that I share about the forgetfulness that has become a common theme in life. (Read: Baby-Brain). It is most definitely a real problem. Take today, for example: as a co-host of a baby shower, I kindly pointed my guests in the direction of the coffee pot and encouraged them to have a cup with their dessert. Several minutes later, one concerned guest brought her cup of murky, but fairly clear, water to me for review. It certainly wasn't coffee. No, the coffee grinds were still sitting in the grinder, next to the coffee pot. What we had was one big pot of hot, light tan, water. Brilliant.

And if that wasn't bad enough, several weeks ago I calmly asked a friend if I knew any of his family members. After staring at me a good long while (I'm sure he thought I was joking), he politely replied, "Yes, you actually were my brother's debate partner for a semester." Oh. my. gosh.

Add to that the numerous times I forget to turn the lights out when I leave a room, or the frequent times I find myself in the basement and can't remember what I went down there for. If this keeps up I hope I don't start forgetting important things like, oh, where I put the baby.

On Hiccups and Slowness

The snow is slowly melting... and the nursery is slowly coming together. My wedding "thank-you" list is slowly nearing completion and every morning finds me sloooowly getting out of bed. I certainly welcome the slow pace these days, and find that I'm much less forgetful if I am slow to move from one task to the other.

Morenna, on the other hand, is anything but slow. Within the last month she has developed a habit of having the hiccups at least once a day. This has been a really unique experience for me. I knew to expect them at some point or another, but this every day stuff is getting a bit much. :-) If I sound like I'm complaining, I am... sort of.

At a recent Drs. visit Morenna was identified as being head down and ready to go. Every mother's dream, right? It's true I'm happy about that fact (although we still have 9 more weeks to go). But every time Morenna has the hiccups, she head-butts my bladder (more than you wanted to know, right?). The scene typically looks like this:

hiccup... bladder spasm... 3 seconds of peace...

hiccup... bladder spasm... Mom wonders if she should visit the restroom... Mom dismisses that thought... 3 seconds of peace...

hiccup... spasm... Mom stands up... Mom sits down... 3 seconds of peace...

hiccup... Mom dashes to the bathroom...

baby's hiccups stop.

Cute, Morenna. I guess that's one way to get me to do a little workout.

Snow Dayz

Today brought an unexpected snow day to our little Virginia home. One thing that is unique about this area is that winter snows most often blow through only once or twice a season, but when they do they leave behind a lot of snow. Today was no exception. Currently 5 inches and counting.

I worked from home part of the day, taking a quick break in the morning only to head out to the store for milk and the chance to have fun doing doughnuts. (Hey, an Ohio girl HAS to practice her ninja snow-driving skills AT LEAST once a season.) The snow is so beautiful and even now is falling in lazy soft-white clumps. To set the mood, I placed cinnamon-apple candles throughout the house and have a batch of banana bread baking in the oven. Mmmm. I love snow days.





In other news, M & I purchased a new piece of furniture for our kitchen. The new buffet fits perfectly in an otherwise wasted corner of our kitchen/dining room. Thankfully it came with lots of storage space, too... so I've been able to unclutter my kitchen cabinets and discover things that I didn't even know I had. :-) Moving the coffee pot has also freed up space on my counters, making me a much happier home-maker. I heart iKEA.

News in our House

Well, things here on the East Coast have been nothing less but hectic over the last month. As we moved past Thanksgiving and ushered in the Christmas season, our little household hit some rough times.

M's work contract at the Pentagon kicked into high gear the beginning of December, requiring him to work 15 hour days, including weekends. At the same time, my father-in-law came for a long-awaited visit. Needless to say, my father-in-law and I had a nice loooong visit together... absent my husband. Very interesting. Then Matt's old college roommate came to visit us with his 2 year old son. Again, Matt got to spent very little time with him. Major bummer.

For Christmas we were grateful to head to Ohio for a visit with my family and a chance to pull Matt away from work. The visit was nice, but very busy. Unfortunately I came down with a really bad cold on Christmas day and spent some of the day in bed. :-P

After a quick two-day time back in VA we were happy to fly out to California to spend New Years with M's family. This was a much needed visit, since we hadn't seen some of his family since the wedding in March, and others since last new year. We squeezed a lot of visiting in with the time we had, which unfortunately left us rather drained. New Years we spent in Fresno with my mother-in-law's family eating home-cooked crab, watching Ratattoui and playing Mexican Train. It was lovely.

In other news, here is my most recent "belly" pic:

Pregnancy has certainly not been a breeze, but it's fun to look back and see how far we've come. My second trimester has now come and gone and I must say it was certainly more enjoyable than the first. The aches and pains are there at times, but M has been so supportive and any bad times quickly pass.

Our baby girl is growing like a weed and we are getting so excited to welcome her into our little family. Last week I got to have a second ultrasound, since the technician apparently made some mistakes with the first. This second "viewing" of our little cherry blossom was so much more fun than the first. She was quite animated, yawning all over the place and smiling. I think my favorite part was getting a picture of the little foot that has been vainly attempting to push itself through my side. :-) You can see the picture of it, below.



Morenna weighed in at approx. 2 lbs and 9 oz and was about 14 inches long. Whew. I sure hope she finds the room she needs in there over the next 2-3 months, because I honestly don't know how she's going to fit. :-)

So anyway, that's the news from our little neck of the woods. I'm looking forward to posting more this new year and keeping everyone up-to-date on our lives.

Kung Fu Elections

Tired of all the political banter? Ready to witness the true strength of today's Presidential candidates? Spend your evening duking it out to the death... be on your guard against Hilary's special powers. ;-)

A New Year

Well, here it is 2008 and I haven't blogged in more than a month! So on that note, you might appreciate seeing my New Year resolutions...

• Blog more often. :-)
  
• Survive until 2009.
• Manage a more efficient social calendar.
• Get a tetanus shot.

Fulfillment of #1 to come soon with details of all the holiday happenings.

A quote to ponder

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."

- Herbert Hoover

Rock-a-bye Baby

So here are the before and after pictures of the new nursery (paint-job, that is). Now on to the furniture... :-)

Our nursery theme is cherry blossoms, so aside from the green walls the rest of the room will be light pinks and whites with cherry furniture. We'll see how it turns out.

So it's was the Monday before Thanksgiving...

And I realized that I haven't posted much in the last week or so. Unfortunately I don't have this great ability to spin interesting factoids about my life out of thin air, hence the silence when I have little exciting news to report. :-)

I joined Facebook a week or two ago. I'm not sure what made me go and do a thing like that, but I did. After breaking into a sweat that somehow I'd published all this private information about myself in a public place, I came to the conclusion that Facebook provided a believable allusion of safety and most likely I wouldn't die in my sleep. This just in: I'm still alive.

In other news, I've passed the halfway point in my adventure with pregnancy. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the whole experience, but I'm certainly grateful that the days seem brighter than they were four months ago. Our little cherry blossom has become quite the little mover and shaker. Consequently, my nights are quickly becoming sleepless half-starved ones. Ah life with my baby and me.

M and I painted the nursery this weekend. Pics are coming soon.

Also this weekend I saw a light at the end of the tunnel of wedding "thank you" notes. I think I'm down to about 45 left (don't ask how many I've done). Note: If you still haven't received your much-deserved note from us... know that we love you and we are obviously saving the best for last. Really.

It's a baby, stupid

Throughout the last few weeks, I've found my pregnant self oddly annoyed by the simple, kindhearted question anxiously posed by friends and strangers alike: "So, do you know what you're having?"

I have to wrestle back the urge to reply: "Ahhh...a baby, I hope."

But sarcasm aside, we finally have a real answer for all of you: "Yes...



... we're expecting a beautiful baby girl."


And in other news, my due date was moved up... so we'll get to see our little Spring cherry blossom a bit earlier than originally expected. :-)

Pumpkin time!

Well, fall has arrived! Hurray!

M & I had such a busy weekend getting things done around the house and enjoying the beautiful fall weather. And most importantly, we carved our pumpkin! M originally named the pumpkin "Porky" but after carving for 3 hours he rightfully changed the name to "Wilson". I guess by scrolling through the pictures below you can see why. :-)



Other accomplishments this weekend included:

• Attending the baby shower of a friend where Baby S. was introduced to Baby Boy Z. and Baby Boy H.... future playmates, we're sure!
  
• Baking a delicious apple crisp. Mmmmm.
• Baking zucchini bread. Mmm Mmm Mmm.
• Roasting pumpkin seeds.
  
• Steam cleaning our basement couch.
• Cleaning the carpet in the future nursery.
• Watching the entire Ohio State vs. Penn State game. Go Bucks!
  

Whew. I'm ready for a nap.

Columbus Day Weekend... A little belated

Time flies when you're having fun, they say. This is true. But time also flies when you're busy, sleeping, chatting on the phone, and sunbathing... but that's just my two cents.

For whatever the reason, I'm just now getting around to posting our Columbus Day weekend festivities. Although the weekend was HOT, I did get in my date with a local apple orchard and some good friends. Granted, strutting around in a hot, sticky orchard was not my vision of fall apple picking, but, well, you can't have it all. :-)

On Saturday, Rachel, Bruce and Hannah (Rach's sister) decided to join us for the fun and we made a day of it! Due to the heat I'm afraid I only picked 6 apples before succombing to the shady base of an apple tree and directing my poor husband to all the "really good" apples. One bushel later, we headed home with our harvest, some fresh apple cidar, local honey and apple butter. Mmmm. After that, a bubbly homemade apple pie finished off the day. (Pictures of the pie to follow once Rach actually sends them to me - ahem.)



Sunday, the W00SH came to spend the night and he and M used the afternoon to move Matt's entire office from a 3rd floor bedroom to the lower level to make room for our up-and-coming nursery. They certainly had a lot of heavy lifting to do but it looked great when they were through. Wow, that was a bit of an emotional shock to see an empty bedroom ready for a "nursery" facelift. I guess the realization of our future arrival is starting to sink in. *gulp*










As if our now-empty room wasn't enough, we spent this past Saturday morning taking a class at the local birthing center and touring the facility. Two words: wierded out. Not sure if I'm ready for all of this, but then again, I don't have much of a choice. :-)

In other news, my parents came for a visit this past weekend, too. It was so nice to see them, despite the chaos of their puppy and Moel Joughon's cat (whom we're catsitting) in the same house. Deadly.

Death by Molasses

So today I discovered a random bit of American history that I previously knew nothing about.

It all started with a personal phone call I received from my OB today, announcing my blood test results were anemic. Fantastic. So like the good patient I desire to be, I immediately hopped online to discover what high-iron foods I haven't been eating. To my surprise, blackstrap molasses was listed as one of the highest forms of natural iron available. Molasses?

After pilphering through my kitchen cabinets I was excited to unearth a whole jar of blackstrap molasses (random, I know. Who knows what else might be in my cabinets). Sure enough, one tablespoon = 70% iron! Whoo hoo... an iron source that's half sugar! Ha Ha. But anyway, I digress.

So as I'm surfing the web for bits of molasses info, I come across a mention of the Great Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919. Thinking it was probably some funny tidbit of history, I clicked through the story and was agast to find out what a devistating tragedy it really was!

More than 2 million gallons of fermented molasses spilled onto the streets of Boston in a wave over 10 feet tall, moving about 35 miles per hour. Mor than 20 were killed and more than 150 were injured, not to mention the economic repercussion and a harbor that was brown with goo for months. Yuck!

"Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was.... Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings — men and women — suffered likewise."

So tell me, did you know about this bit of history? I certainly found it very facinating and wondered why I had never heard about it before.

Of Cleaning and Clumsiness

For better or worse I've been in a cleaning and straightening mood. Absolutely everything I've laid my eyes on recently has need dusted or organized, vacuumed or polished. And that went for my blog, too. So my loving husband spent part of his weekend helping me redo the HTML coding on my blog to get it the way I wanted it. What a guy!

But it's probably a good thing that I'm in this cleaning mood because I'm afraid I've been making a lot of messes lately. Don't shoot me, but yes, I think it has to be pregnancy-relatd. I never was this clumsy before. Two weeks ago I spilled my berry frozen fruit drink (yes, as in BLUEberry, BLACKberry, RED rasberry) all over our beige suede couch. Thank God that Oxi-Clean came to the rescue. Then last week it was sugary ORANGE juice that I spilled (as in literally dumped the whole thing over with my hand) all over our new turkish rug, which a friend had brought back from Iraq for us. Brilliant. Oxi-Clean to the rescue again. So you can see why it's probably a good thing I'm in a "cleaning" mood. Who knows what I'll attempt to destroy next.

In other news, Fall decided to make a laughing-stock out of my previous emotion-filled post announcing his arrival. It's been 93F today and hot as the dickens. All that wonderful canned pumpkin that my husband bought to fulfill my autumn cooking drive is now just sitting in the cupboard waiting for a rainy (or colder) day. I'm not bitter.

I AM bitter at the nurse who took all my blood today at the doctor's office. How nice of her to assure me ahead of time that my body wouldn't need it anyway. I still think it's bogus that my body "didn't really need" the 6 LARGE viles that she extracted. I wanted so badly to ask if all the bloodwork was really necessary, but everytime I broached the subject I got that evil eye... you know, the one that says "this isn't about you, it's about your unborn child... and you wouldn't put it's health in jeopardy now would you?" I hate that look.

But Baby S. has certainly benefitted from the physical abuse I've survived the last couple of months. It's little heart measured in today at 160 beats - right on target. I must say I really enjoyed hearing it this time since previously I was too sick to care. So far we're on track to have a healthy happy little one! But for now, I'm enjoying the peace and quiet at home...

And for those of you who we've neglected for the past bazillion weeks, please know we hope to resume our regularly scheduled social calendar very soon. :-)

Thought for the Day...

A thought for the day by Robert Heinlein (who was the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard" science fiction, according to Wiki):

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I'm not sure if this leaves me feeling accomplished or inept. :-)

Days of Rest

Fall is in the air... there's no doubt about that. I'm pretty sure it arrived Wednesday of last week and has been blowing about since then. With it came the strongest desire to go apple-picking and hiking, something I can't exactly do at the moment, but it's on the calendar. :-) My mind has been lost in thoughts of homemade goodies like apple pie, pumpkin bread, apple butter and butternut squash. Mmmm.

Saturday was absolutely beautiful here and I felt the best I had in days. I was able to take a shower (not a bath like I'd been doing the past 5 weeks - yuck!) and make the bed. I ran into a bit of an awkward dilemma, though, when I could not find any clothes that fit me. I guess that's what I get for wearing pajamas for so long.

Arm in arm with my husband we went out into the fall air for a little walk and I felt the sun on my face for the first time in weeks. How glorious and refreshing it was! Matt spent the rest of the day doing household chores and I watched the Ohio State football game (how's that for a little role reversal?). Finally as the sun set, Matt and I reminisced of childhood memories of fall... camping, harvest parties, rolling around in hay, pumpkin carving. It was a delicious day.

Taken Captive...

For whatever the crime (:cough: :cough:)... I'm doing the time. Yes, it's true. Joining millions of women everywhere, I'm stepping up and paying my dues. "What dues," you ask? Well, see if any of these give it away...

1. For 5 weeks now you've been unable to play the deadly game of Survivor... of commuter traffic, that is. In fact, you probably haven't been behind the wheel in over 6 weeks. You've been nominated for an award by the Environmental Defense Fund for the amount of gas you've saved by never leaving your house.

2. Your new dieting plan is so successful it's scary. Eat what you can... throw it up later. Simple. Concise. (Feel free to ask about the follow-up plan, "How to Gain Weight on an Empty Stomach". It's a best-seller.)

3. You're able to have emotional breakdowns at the drop of a dime and no one asks any questions. The more you do this, the more bouquets of flowers you receive.

4. You visit the doctor because you're pretty sure you're dying. Doctor says, "the heart rate is 174. You both seem to be in perfect shape, why are you here?" You shoot a nasty glare her direction and then proceed to crawl out of her office on your hands and knees. She smiles and wishes you well.

5. You're in fierce competition with your Grandfather over who is taking the most prescription medications to stay alive. So far you've lost count. Let's see, there's the one to keep you from throwing up, the one to calm your stomach once you have thrown up, the one that replenishes the lost nutrients from throwing up, the one to manage the migraine that arrives from continuously throwing up.... and others you care not to share. Total: 173

I think that's enough that you get the point.

"In his heart a man plans his course, but it is the Lord who determines his steps..." ~ Proverbs 16:9

It's a no-brainer that M and I's "course" will be much different than originally planned. Human calculations predict Baby S may appear around 3.31.08. But in the end, who really knows what the adventure will look like. So far, it's been absolutely loads of fun.

A best friend...

I've been thinking a lot lately about how precious friendship is, especially friendship in the form of a husband. M didn't have to love me (in the way one might perceive family would), but he CHOSE to. In my situation, my husband decided to love me even when I was unlovable (and told him to get lost. :-/). He chose to remain by my side for the rest of my life, not because of what he could get out of it.

One thing I've learned in our five months of marriage is how selfless true love really is. My husband continues to teach me more and more about the love that Christ has for His church. I have to keep reminding myself that my husband's love is only a shadow of God's love for me... what a blessed thing! M., your love rightfully puts me to shame... May I grow in selflessly loving others. Your love has been one of the greatest blessings in my life, apart from my salvation. I love you, M.

A reflection on Christ and the Church