98 Days!

Oh my god! Less than a 100 days until my due date. Time is flying by so fast.

Next week I start my third trimester. I was printing out some calendars at work yesterday and just happened to glance at May 31st and realized that I might have a baby by then. I knew it would go faster than I expected but this is almost too fast.

So a quick update as to where I am. I am 26 weeks along. I feel Baby L. everyday which I love and is also slightly alien like too. Our house is beginning to have signs of baby everywhere. There is a crib in the nursery and diapers and tiny clothes in her closet. We also now have a stroller, play pen, and an infant car seat. For some reason the car seat makes it feel the most real.

The nursery is coming along nicely. We fixed up and repainted a book shelf that we already had and found a great dresser on craigslist that has also now been painted. My friend Naja is coming over tomorrow and hopefully after that there will be curtains up too. I have my first shower in 3 weeks which will also be my last solo trip for who knows how many years. My wonderful family is throwing the shindig in the bay area for me. Then things will really speed up, I have a feeling April and May are just going to fly by!

Team Pink!

Team Pink! 20 weeks 4 days

This is a phrase that is used on a chat board I follow to declare whether you are having a boy, a girl or are waiting for a surprise. Team blue for boy and green for surprise. So we are expecting a little girl.

I am thrilled. I always hoped for a little girl, I have a trunk of saved dolls in the hope that I would have someone who would play with them someday. It's funny though I was pretty sure that we were having a boy and became attached to a potential son. Well hopefully we will have one of each!

I am officially half way through my pregnancy and I have to say it is flying by so far. I have had a relatively easy time so far (knock on wood), no major morning sickness and what mostly kicked my butt in the first trimester was the exhaustion. I am now well into my second trimester, what the Dr.'s consider the honeymoon phase of pregnancy. Boy are they right, my energy is back and I am still small enough that I can function mostly normally and still sleep comfortably. Early on I was referred to a specialist because there was a high possibility that I had a hypo thyroid but after many pokes in the arm. They feel pretty certain that it was just a reaction to pregnancy. So except for some follow up lab work I am back to being a completely healthy and normal pregnancy.

I have learned to love the word "normal" during this. The sweetest phrase you can hear at a milestone appointment is everything looks normal and right on track. At 12 weeks we had something called an NT Scan where they look for chromosomal abnormalities. Our results were wonderful, 1 in 8000 chance of Downs and 1 in 10,000 of several other fatal ones. They were wonderful words to hear. We had our anatomy scan last week, which is when we found out the gender, but is actually to measure growth of brain, nervous system and all the other internal organs. Once again everything looks great and "normal"! I think the second half of this pregnancy is going to go even faster than the first. All the fun stuff gets to happen now, showers will be had, names will be picked (although we are going to be keeping it to ourselves for now) and the nursery will be set up.

I will try and be better about updating more regularly too, so that I can remember later what I was feeling and thinking along this amazing journey.

Big News!!!!!!

9/28/10 (4 weeks and 5 days)

Today we found out that we are having a baby! I am so thrilled and shocked and terrified all at the same time. We are keeping this news to ourselves for a while but I wanted to keep track of what I am feeling both physically and emotionally.

We decided that we were ready to start trying about 6 weeks ago, we have been thinking long and hard about it for about a year though. Neither one of us were expecting things to happen this quickly however. We will keep that in mind though when we try for a second.

So many of the books you read talk about some women just know. I took that with a huge grain of salt, but I just did. I knew something was different almost right away. Now I am not saying that I knew the moment of conception but I knew about 10 days before my expected period. I took 2 pregnancy tests and they both came back negative. I decided to see if things were late before I would test again.

Saturday the 25th I woke up feeling like I was going to get my period any second. I was surprised how disappointed that I felt, I mean we had just barely started trying. We had already made plans to go to Colorado Springs to visit Charlie and Diane (Kirk's dad and step-mom). I thought this would be a great distraction. I was so convinced in fact of not being pregnant that I had 3 glasses of wine that night with dinner. Then after dinner I got really cold and no one else in the room seemed to feel it. The cold combined with some other unusual symptons I began to really suspect that I actually was pregnant. I somehow made it through the rest of the trip. I decided I wanted to hold off testing for a few more days. I just didn't want to see that negative. I made it through work Monday and Tuesday but went straight to the drugstore after work on Tuesday.

I went home and tested right away! I stood over it and waited thinking it would take the full 2 minutes, but no almost immediately a second line appeared. We decided to use a fancy digital one next but I needed to drink some water first. So after dinner round 2 and unmistakeably "pregnant" appeared in the window.

I am so excited and nervous! I am having a very hard time keeping this to myself at the moment but if something goes wrong then I don't want to have to tell a million people. Plus I am already fantasizing about sonogram pictures on the Christmas card ;)

Routine... or lack there of

I cannot believe that it has been since April that I have blogged. Every week I have the intention of updating and then I get lazy or life gets in the way. The biggest change in the last six months is my job.

I got a promotion! Wahoo!

How I got it however was not so great and made the whole transition very stressful and draining. My boss was very unexpectedly let go and after some thought by myself and another co-worker we presented a re-organization of the production department. And they went for it. In many ways it is just what I have been hoping for; regular work hours, less nights and weekends, and less lifting heavy things and running around. I was definitely beginning to feel the job after 9 years.

And of course like all things when you actually get what you want it can be a bit of a let down. Now don't get me wrong I am loving the new job and relishing in being challenged again after years of being in the exact same roll. Here is the thing though, I am a creature of habit. Years of wishing for a normal routine meant I didn't notice how much of a routine my crazy schedule had become for me. So yes I now know when I go to work and when I will get home and all of the reasons why I wanted that still apply. I just don't go shopping on Tuesday mornings anymore and my weekend is truly a weekend which I have found makes it harder for me to do all of the chores since I want it to be about the fun stuff.

I know that I will figure it all out and get on track after just a few more months, it's just that the type A person inside of me feels like I am just not on top of it all at the moment. I had taken for granted that fact that because I could my job with my eyes closed, I could spend lots of time on things at home. Now that work is challenging me again I have less motivation at home. I know it's all about the balance and I will find it again.

So hopefully I will get back into the blogging (although the 101 in 1001 maybe totally shot). I have a huge amount of pictures to post.

So here is to the return of routine in my life!

Wow I haven't blogged once this month. In my defense I was out of town, very busy at work and I have been sick for a couple of weeks. No matter what though I haven't kept up and I will soon.

Magical

So I was wandering through the store the other day and I saw this for sale and on a whim I grabbed it. When I was a little girl I love Disney movies. I still remember my mom and I heading to the theater to see "Beauty and the Beast" and it was such a magical moment. I own all the classics and when I am feeling nostalgic I will watch "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty" or "Beauty and the Beast"(which is still my favorite by the way). I have been a little saddened in the recent years to see nothing but computer animated Pixar movies coming out. Don't get me wrong those are great movies and I saw "Up" and loved it. But there is nothing quite like seeing a hand drawn animated musical.

I had heard about "The Princess and the Frog" and I was pleased and somewhat intrigued that it was going to be a traditional Disney movie. I didn't however go to see it. I did decide to pick it up and this morning as the hubby slept in, I watched it. I have to say that I am in love. It totally took me back my childhood. When the hubby did finally wake up he found me laughing out loud on the couch.

I will also admit that I had visions of future kiddos in my head too. The hubby is from New Orleans so the idea that the movie has the street cars, the beautiful houses, the music, the french quarter, gumbo and of course the best part, beignets! I can already see the kids loving it because it has so much of what they will grow up with on visits to the family.

Overall I loved and am very pleased that I added it to our video library!

Check in!

Well here it is 3 weeks after my last post. I clearly was a little too optimistic when I thought about how often I would post. I have at least been going full steam ahead with my list. I haven't tackled any of the biggies yet, mostly concentrating on the daily ones.

The daily things have been the hardest to accomplish because it means that I have to change my habits. The stretching and the vitamins have been the easiest probably because they make me feel better almost immediately. The sunscreen is hard because I spend most of my day in the dark theater so it just doesn't occur to me. The flossing I just need to do it!

So on to the other stuff; last Sunday I had a lovely brunch with my mom. We ate a local french bistro and sat and chatted for 2 hours while sipping cappuccino, it was divine. We haven't spent that much time just catching up in much too long.

I have been very busy at work but did find sometime to try a new recipe. I wanted something easy, tasty and would hopefully produce a lot of leftovers. I found the answer on my Everyday Italian dvd's that I got for Christmas, garlic and citrus chicken. You take a whole chicken and remove the giblets, stuff it full of garlic and orange and lemon wedges. Cook for a couple of hours and voila! You get this...

It was wonderful! Very tasty, moist and easy! It did take time though mostly just waiting while it cooks.

My next cooking project happened just the other night, the hubs was at work but I decided to make it anyway. It came from the cookbook "The Art of Simple Food" by Alice Waters. The was poached salmon, I have poached salmon before but never just in boiling water like this called for. You take white wine, fresh herbs, and some salt and pepper. Mix that in too boiling water and then throw in the fish for about 6 mins. Supper easy.

It was however only ok. It was very moist but didn't have great flavor. My baked salmon is way better, it did have some variations on the recipe so I will play around with those to see if I can give it more flavor because the cooking time just can't be beat!

One last accomplishment, I finished "Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman. It is the first of a trilogy called "His Dark Materials"

This came off my bookshelf so I am still sticking with that goal as well. It was pretty good. Its definitely a book for a young readers but I still found it engaging. It is very fantasy based and I love the daemons that represent the human soul. I am well into book 2 already.

Sorry about the really long post. If I can just get into the habit blogging more regularly than I can be better about keeping them shorter.