Letter to baby

Dear baby,

I love you and I love to feel you move around. I am comforted every time I feel you move as it lets me know that you are developing and doing well. It makes me smile to feel your cute little “bops” from the inside. But please, oh could you please, stop kicking me in the bladder? As we are half way done, I imagine that your kicks will only get stronger and I have no desire to pee myself in public.

Thank you,
Your loving mother

Tuesday's list

Seeing good friends you haven't seen in forever, and having a great time
Costco Truffles
Warm fires at night
Flannel PJs
(Can you tell I am ready to go home and go to bed?)
Having someone else cook dinner

Sunday's list...a little late

Well, it looks like I missed a day...oh well. It was such a good day that I thought I would share it with you.

Brian and I went out to brunch at our favorite place, Newport Seafood Grill, and found out that we won a $500 gift card. Looks like we will be enjoying Newport for free for awhile! :o)

A couple weeks ago, they were handing out promo cards that you could take in for a chance to win $10 or $500. We took our cards in and each time we got $10. And that was great, I'll take $10 off my meal anyday. But, they had a second chance to win if you registered your card online. So, I did, and we didn't even know we won the $500 until after our meal when our waitress came up and said,"You guys were $500 winners?" And I said, "No." Then she said,"Well, this card has $500 dollars on it."

It was awesome.

We celebrated by going to see The Blind Side. (We were going to see it anyway.) What a great movie. Thanks for the tip Mom.

It was a good day.

Saturday's list

Today I am thankful:

that as my butt gets bigger, with the increase in surface area, the cellulite is spreading out and it looks smoother. It might be bigger but it looks smoother. :o)

Sleeping in
Pre-made salads

Friday's list

Quizno's Honey Mustard Chicken Salad
Weekends
In season pears

Thursday's list

I have noticed that I have not been posting very often, so in an effort to get myself on here every day I have decided to put up a list of things that I enjoyed, or made me laugh, or that I am thankful for.

Without further ado, here is today’s list of things I am thankful for:

• My husband, who has really been supportive, funny and, for the most part, nice to be around.
• Airplane air-sickness bags
• Summer and my wonderful new haircut
• Toasted Almonds
• Alice and Nicki
• Chocolate
• Clean public restrooms
• People who can laugh at my forgetfulness
• Zoloft

Baby Update

Today is the beginning of week 17 so I thought an update was in order.

About two weeks ago I started to feel the hardness that is the uterus/fluid/baby. I would lean on the counter to get something and I could feel what felt like a grapefruit in there. And the weird thing is, the grapefruit moves. At times it feels like it is trying to push its way out. It moves to the front and my stomach looks pregnant and is rock hard. Other times it is like the grapefruit moves into my lower back and my belly is just as flabby as before I was pregnant.

I have started feeling pressure and “flutters”. One day last week I was in bed getting ready to go to sleep and I could feel this really hard ‘lump’ on one side of my stomach. I moved on to my other side and the ‘lump’ moved too. It was cool. I often feel a lot of pressure right below my belly button, like the baby is trying to push out, almost like it is pushing against the waist band of my pants.

I can also feel movement, like the baby is doing summersaults. I don’t feel anything yet that feels like a kick, but I can feel something. I imagine that if blankets had feelings and a cat was under the covers crawling around, I am feeling what the blanket would feel.

Wednesday Worries

I often have these random worries that wander in and out of my head and I thought, who better to share them with than you? I also then thought that as a favor to you I keep the sharing of said worries to one day a week. So, welcome to the first ‘Wednesday Worries’.
This week I have two random worries. The first is, how I am going to shave once my belly gets big. Am I going to have to have Brian do it? Should I just spend the money and get waxed? (Ugh, yet another thing to spend money on!) I guess I could test out a few of my friendships and see if I can get one of my girlfriends to shave my legs. HaHa. Or I could just use this as an excuse not to shave at all…it will be winter after all.

And the second is, what if I can’t get my shoes on? I wear tennis shoes everyday because I hate to have my feet hurt or be cold in the winter and I am having visions me bending in all sorts of weird ways in order to get them on my feet. Otherwise, I think I am going to have to ask Brian to help me put on my shoes every day. Maybe I will buy a long handled shoe horn so that I can shove my feet in the tennis shoes without bending the heals. And that reminds me, I need to go buy new tennis shoes, which I hate. It always takes forever to find a pair that fits my feet the way I like. (Side note: attention shoe manufactures, please make arch supports higher.)

Am I going to have to switch to slip-ons? Am I going to have to wear flip flops…starting in like March? Brrrr! That means I will have to wear toe socks (which, by the way, I totally would) but that means I will have to get them on. And isn’t that just as hard, if not harder, then getting on shoes? Or if I don’t want to wear socks I would have to do my toenails.

Ohhhh, wait…

Pedicures! I think I just figured this all out.

This doesn’t address the cold feet problem but it does allow for pedicures, I guess we all have to make sacrifices. ;o)

Something funny from last night

So, last night as Brian and I were going through the fridge trying to find something for dinner. He pulled out a jar of Jamaican Jerk Seasoning and said, "Is this still in here? How do you know when Jerk seasoning goes bad?"

I replied, "When it turns into Jamaican A**hole Seasoning."

the gDiaper

I have been thinking a lot about diapers lately. Cloth or disposable… Which is better? Which is more cost effective? Which is more convenient? Can I handle washing dirty diapers? What type is accepted at daycare? Which one will fit best with our lifestyle and our values?

I can think of many things that I like and don’t like about both. For example, I like the ease of disposables, use once, throw in trash. But this also is one of the things I don’t like, use once, throw away, how wasteful and bad for the environment (they last for like 500 years in landfills, you know.)

Then I think, cloth diapers, they are reusable… and then I picture myself, walking through the store, with an adorable, cooing baby in one arm and a diaper bag full of dirty diapers on the other. The smell of baby poop wafting along behind me as I stroll down the aisle. Gross!

I could list out all the things I like and dislike about both, but I don’t want to bore you with that, since I think I found the perfect solution…the gDiaper!

They are offer all the benefits of the pocket style cloth diaper but also have a biodegradable insert that can be flushed, composted or thrown away. (They decompose completely in about 90 days.) They aren’t overly expensive, you can get them at local grocery stores or online and you don't have to buy two separate styles. And I really love the fact that if I am in a situation where I want the convenience of a disposable diaper I can use it and know that they won’t sit in landfills for 500 years. Single use diapers with none of the guilt.

I think I’m in love. :o)

Now, I know I shouldn’t go on and on about a product that I haven’t used yet, but I am getting them. With the discovery of the gDiaper I am excited that I can use one system at home and one on the go, without feeling like I am ruining the planet, and only have to invest in one system. And if I discover that I am not the cloth diaper type of mom, I can still use the gDiaper with the disposable liner. It is win-win.

Check them out for yourself: http://www.gdiapers.com/

I never thought I could/would get so excited about diapers.

The Amazing Stomach

I have a question about stomachs. I totally don’t understand how they work. I am always baffled at my stomach’s ability to sort out the things that I eat.

Let me give you an example: Yesterday morning I had a smoothie; made from a banana, two handfuls of spinach and a handful of blueberries, a piece of toast and a cheese stick. Later yesterday morning I threw up only part of the cheese and the blueberries, or at least stuff that was the color of blueberries.

Hummm. How does that work? Is there a little man down there that says, “Stop, spinach-good, blueberries-bad!“ and then kicks out the blueberries? What did the blueberries do to deserve that? I thought they were a super food too? It all gets eaten at the same time, why doesn’t it come back up all mixed together?

Please note, it is not like I sit there and dissect the food coming back out my mouth, but when my head is 10 inches from the bottom of the trash can, where it all ends up, and I am patiently waiting for the next round, what else am I suppose to do?

This, by the way, is not the first time this has happened. I have eaten things only to throw up part of it later.

I just don’t get it…if anyone can explain this to me, please do.

Panic and a Suitcase

Currently, while writing this, I am at 30,000 feet headed across the country, Portland to Boston. The flight has been mostly smooth; the only excitement was my flair up of morning sickness that started right as I found my seat. We took off out of the blanket of fog that had descended on the city this morning, which is somehow more beautiful from above. We traveled over patchwork areas of all shades of brown and green, over mountains and lakes, and miles of puffy white clouds, all on the quest to find the other side of country.

What I really wanted to talk about for this trip is…the panic that comes with packing. Not only packing, but packing when you don’t know what is going to fit. I am at a stage where my old “pre-pregnancy” clothes fit, sort of. Certain areas of my body fit fine in my clothes and other do not. My available items to choose from has grown smaller and smaller and I don’t really want to buy a bigger size that I hopefully won’t wear after the birth. With this in mind, I have a wonderful friend who is letting me borrow some of her clothes, but I am not really at the point where I need them that big yet. So, in them I just look fat, fat in baggy ill-fitting clothes.

So, right now, what I am wondering is, when will I start to look pregnant and not just fat? I was not skinny pre-pregnancy, at least 15 pounds overweight and I was bumpy before. Now I am extra bumpy, things in my midsection are moving and shifting to new locations and the bumps are getting bigger in areas I had not expected.

All of this is wreaking havoc with my body image, which I didn’t like much to begin with and making me want to exercise a lot and try to lose body fat. I just don’t know if that is safe or how to do it. According to my BMI I should only gain about 20 pounds (I think) and I just not sure how one is suppose to go about doing that.

I am ready to have a belly that looks like a baby belly and not just one gained by years of cookie eating and TV watching.

What is 'a 20 50'?

Once upon a time in a land called Reno, when my oldest niece was young, we always played the 'I love you' game. Here is how it went:

Me: I love you
Her: I love you, too.
Me: I love you three.
Her: I love you four.
Me: I love you five.
Her: I love you like a hundred.
Me: I love you like a million.
Her: I love you like a 20 50.
Me: I love you like a 20 51.
Her: No! It only goes to 20 50. That's the highest number.