At the risk of being a link-dump...

I have to say this blog that a friend at work called my attention to is really funny, although very shallow. A genuine jab at pale Americans. The post on moving to Canada is probably my favorite... right up there with #55 on apologies.

Note: Not personally responsible for any questionable blog content. I didn't read ALL the entries.

The One Month Countdown

My pregnancy road is rapidly nearing the end. Today marked the beginning of my last month... should Morenna come neither early nor late, but on her due date. Highly unlikely. :-)

But with this one month countdown comes the urgent reminder of all that I have left to do to get ready. Here's the list as it currently stands:

• Pick a pediatrician
  
• Wash all the new baby clothes
• Finish decorating the nursery - low priority (pictures in the post below, if you haven't seen them)
• Write thank-you notes for all the sweet baby items
• Pack the diaper bag
• Stock the changing table (diapers - check; soap - check; need: wipes, etc.)
  
• Pack my hospital bag
• Complete the childbirth education class
• Freeze up some meals
  
• Train my replacement at work and submit employment paperwork
• Sleep, sleep, sleep!!!

Will all these things get done? Probably not. But I sure am gonna try... especially with the last one. :-)

La De Da

I know it's been a little while since my last post. Sorry 'bout that. Last weekend my parents came to visit and bring over the baby furniture that M and I had received as Christmas gifts. Although my poor Dad was recovering from the flu, they all made it over in one piece... dog included. :-)

While M and my Dad put all the furniture together, Mom and I headed over to a friend's for a lovely baby shower brunch. It was so nice to get to celebrate the coming of Morenna with so many good friends (including many old roommates) and my Mom.


Here's a showing of the ex-roomies who were able to come. It says a lot that they are all still my friends. :-) More pictures from the shower can be seen here.

After the shower (which carried on for almost 4 hours as we were having so much fun!) my Mom and I trekked home to check up on the boy's improvements to the baby nursery. We were not disappointed. And after just a few minor tweaks and decorating additions, we had ourselves a nursery. The video below provides the best view of the nursery, but I've also included some pictures (you can click on the slideshow to view the pictures individually).








So after the busy weekend, M and I spent President's day quietly at home together. This weekend was rather quiet as well. Friday showed every possibility of being a snow day... but alas, the bad weather was skittish. To boost my spirits, though, M treated me to a wonderful steak dinner. *sigh* My husband is so sweet to me. On Saturday we spent some much needed time with friends, tidied up the house, and got the rest of the nursery in order. Sunday we relaxed... and watched our childbirth education videos. Ack! No further comment.

Meme's Galore

So I was tagged by a friend to participate in this latest meme. But before I do I must discuss the some sentiment on the practice of memes.

It's been my experience that most bloggers tend to fall into one of three major categories concerning memes:

1. Those who appreciate them about as much as they appreciate the senseless chain emails that float about in their inboxes. You know, the ones with the sob stories that demand you forward the email to ten of your friends or else half of the children in Africa will die and God will stop loving you.

2. Those who neither like nor dislike them. If a friend tags them, they are more than happy to participate, but they don't often initiate them.

3. Those who think they're a world of social networking fun and would be happy to participate in one daily. Not to mention they like the word itself. Meme.

That said, it's safe to announce I'm in the second school of thought. But I hesitate to tag others for fear that they might be in the first school and terminate our friendship. :-) Therefore, I'm going to do something a teensy bit different with this meme. No one will be tagged at the end, but if you read this post, haven't participated in this meme before, and belong to the first or second school of thought... then please personally respond to the questions in the comment section of this post. I'm thinking specifically of Sandy S., Brittany/Alecia A., Cami, Aunt P., etc. You guys don't have blogs, but I know you read mine... so make yourself known. ;-)


And the rules are...

1.) Show some cyber-love to the person who tagged you. -- Well, I've never shown anyone cyber-love. That sounds rather sketchy. But here's to my friend, SEM, who has the most darling little girl and is a fantastic, well-rounded Mom to boot!

2.) Post the 5 Meme Commandments on your blog so no one cheats. -- You're reading them.

3.)Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself without grossing anyone out. Below.

4.) Tag 6 random people at the end. -- Change of plans, as mentioned above. So I guess that means I'm cheating... but it's all in good fun. :-)

5.) Let the lucky winners know by commenting on their blog. -- What if they don't have blogs? ;-) Who wrote these rules, anyway?!

And now for the the real reason you've kept on reading:

1.) Last year I posted seven random facts about myself (my meme of 2007 :-) and I grossed a couple people out with #1 and #7... so I guess I can't restate that one here or else I would be breaking rule number 3. :-)

2.) When I'm trying to wake up in the morning I usually hum random made-up melodies with my head buried in my pillow until I'm more awake. My husband thinks it's cute.

3.) Through my entire pregnancy I've had a STRONG aversion to chicken and a craving for Pop-Tarts and Toaster Strudels.

4.) On Christmas Eve I still leave out milk and cookies for my :cough: Dad and insist that the Christmas Tree stay lit throughout the night. It's been that way since I was a little girl.

5.) When I was younger I used to wake up in the middle of the night and be terrified that I was the only one in the whole world who was awake. (Excuse: we lived in the country so it was pretty darn quiet at night.)

6.) I drew the cover illustrations for the book, "The Penguins of Penguin Town", for a local library contest when I was nine. Seven years later the librarian who organized the contest discovered the book when the library was getting ready to dispose of it and saved it for me. It now will be part of Morenna's new little library.

Browsing the Shelves

At the risk of being overly random, I thought I might mention the two books I'm currently wading through:

Whitewash by Brent Bozell


The Faith by Charles Colson (No, I'm not kissing up. Chuck gave me a signed copy so of course I have to read it in case he stops by my desk to ask me how I like it... which he will. I'm not complaining, though. It's been a great book so far.)

A Bummer of a Weekend

It's been a bummer of a weekend. My cold turned overnight into a full-blown sinus infection, which led us to cancel our trip to Ohio. The baby shower didn't happen... or rather, it did happen, just without me. :-) My family was so sweet to have the shower even though I wasn't there, and they called me on the phone while they played games and celebrated and took lots of pictures. The cake looked absolutely adorable and covered in cherry blossoms. It all made me feel so loved.

My hubby took time off work to get me feeling better, too. It's been such a blessing to have him home. Plus the Giants won the Superbowl, so I guess this bummer-of-a-weekend still has some good points.

Now I'm hoping I can get back on my feet after spending 5 days in bed! It's no fun being sick but it's so nice to be waited on hand and foot. :-)

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.