Thankful

I'm so thankful. For my family and friends. For my husband and our little one, who had a big day yesterday.

First, I felt her kicking hard while sitting at my desk, so I leaned back to appreciate. Suddenly I felt a huge kick and saw my belly move around on its own! What a treat! What a kicker! I feel like she's already ornery.

Second, when I was laying on the couch later - as I am wont to do - I felt her kicking again. When she stopped, I made big soothing rubs across my belly. When I stopped, she started kicking again. And we did this over and over again for a half an hour because I just didn't get tired of it.

I'm going to put off researching if babies are capable of this kind of game because I prefer my sugar-coated belief that BabyShock and I had some serious bonding last night.

I'm thankful for the dinner that I'll be eating later today, and the people who will be sitting around the table.

I'm thankful that I've been off Zofran for 5 days.

I'm thankful for you. And I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

A Magical Madness

Can I just tell you that I love going grocery shopping the day before Thanksgiving? (I’m still not sure if a question mark or exclamation point goes at the end of that sentence.)

First of all, the stores know about the impending madness so they lay out piles of the staples. Everywhere you look are towers of pumpkin pie filling and pie crusts. They know about the time crunch, so they put all the ingredients for key meal dishes right next to each other. A tower of green bean cans stands next to the cream of mushroom soup and onion straws to make that traditional green bean casserole.

People are so frantic. “Bill! Bill! Oh God, Bill! There’s no more Swanson’s Chicken Broth! Oh God!”
I love the procrastinators who are looking through the 3 remaining frozen Butterball turkeys with great interest, thinking, "Um, this will thaw out by tomorrow morning, right??"

I love people that wear Thanksgiving vests and sweaters.

I love the open bins of nuts. Do people really buy nuts this way? What do you do with them? Roast them over an open fire?

Anyway, I love it all. All except the checkout lines.

Registering

We registered on Saturday!

It was really fun and I'm so glad to have finally accomplished something. You see, we (mostly I) have a list of things I need to get done soon for my mental health. Registering was one of the things. Also on the list are finding a daycare, taking baby classes and painting the nursery (not me, Michael). Our nursery is yellow right now, but it's a yellow that is a tad brighter than we now want. So we're thinking about painting it a really pale pink now that we've decided on our colors.

Michael and my mom came to register with me. It was good to have our little group. Michael provided the comic relief (him insisting that we could save money on a breast pump by having him "milk" me) and Mom was there for opinions and informational purposes ("Do babies even use a comforter?)

Here is the bedding/colors we decided on:
It's different shades of pink and chocolate brown. We originally thought we might go light purple but it was just too hard getting all the purples to match. The things we finally settled on remind me of something out of a magazine or movie - totally beautiful. Can't wait to see our little girl using all the stuff we picked out today!

Mom was a great help, and Michael took his job as listkeeper very seriously.

Gatsby and We Under the Stars

Michael and I did something special on Friday night.


We've always known about the movies in the park at a local mall but haven't gone to one yet. It's getting colder at night, the holidays are coming and it seemed like such a romantic and season-y thing to do.


For those reading not from Arizona, this particular mall was like many here - an outdoor mall. So in the largest courtyard people showed up hours in advance to set out blankets and chairs to secure a great spot for the movie. This week's feature was The Great Gatsby. Maybe not the most thrilling or fast-paced of films, but that wasn't the point. The point was how great it was to be out there together.

We picked up a pizza and salad and brought it back to our blanket for a little pre-show picnic. We were pretty close to the screen, but it was nice because if we'd been any further back we would have had people in chairs in our way. This way we could lay back on our blanket and have the perfect view.

Just before the movie started Michael got himself a coffee and me a hot cocoa. He also brought back a delicious warm cookie.

If you can't tell, I was in heaven.

It was just so niceto snuggle under the blankets while we layed out under the big ol' moon. It got really cold out there! Favorite moment of the night: when we were walking around and Michael said, "We should bring our little girl here."

Did I miss Thanksgiving?

As you all know by now, I love Christmas. I get a little overexcited and usually start staring wistfully at the seasonal section of store a tad too early. I don’t complain when holiday music starts playing on the radio (although even I can’t stand to listen to it all the time. Stay tuned for a blog about the most annoying Christmas songs). I usually just nod my head and keep quiet when I hear people complaining about how “Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier each year!” and “Gosh, it’s not even Halloween yet!” HOWEVER…

Yesterday was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I have decided to host some kind of Turkey Day Games at my folks' house on Thursday to have some fun and maybe get us on our feet for an hour instead of spending the rest of the day in a turkey-induced coma on the couch. (Trust me, there will still be a coma. Maybe just a shorter-lived one.) So Michael and I venture out last night to find some last-minute T-Day decorations. I went into it being kind of picky – I was looking for a small stuffed animal turkey, about the size of a Beanie Baby. (Now I’m wishing I’d kept my BB collection, as a matter of fact, because I’m pretty sure I owned Gobbles myself.)

By the way, I recalled Gobbles’ name from memory and not from Google – something which I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed or proud of.

Anyway, we went to Michaels. We went to Target. We went to the Dollar Store. There was NOTHING out there. There were tons of Christmas decorations. Row after row of bows and ribbons and figurines and fake snow. Trees and tinsel and incense and crafts. There wasn’t a single turkey or cornucopia or Pilgrim or Indian. Not a sticker book or feathers to make your own turkey hat. Nothing.

This is the only moment where I say, “Hold on, Christmas! Let us still have Thanksgiving!” It felt like we’d missed Thanksgiving and it was still 5 days away! I love Christmas, but Thanksgiving is great too! I don't want to just skip over it! It was kind of saddening.

So if anyone knows where I can get a Gobbles in the next few days, or a place that still has Thanksgiving decorations for sale, please let me know!

And I’d like to leave you with a 22 Week haiku:

Puking vitamins
Makes your throat feel like acid
Has been poured down it.

Hope you enjoy!

San Diegan Invasion

Like I mentioned in a previous post, we were the glad hosts of friends Russell and Alexa last weekend. They came out as a celebration of Russell's birthday because the Seahawks, his team, were playing the Cardinals.
On Sunday we went to the game, Michael and I in neutral tones and Russell in his Seahawks jersey.

Question: What do you do when you've run out of koozies, have a pair of football gloves and have a tall boy to drink? YOU MAKE DUE is what you do:We had some great seats near one of the endzones.
I guess I always thought that Arizona fans were pretty tame. Shoot, half our winter population is snowbirds and most of us are too tired from the heat to get into too much trouble. Well, I learned that even Cards fans will fight when our team is losing and enough overpriced beer has been consumed.

In case you didn't guess, we witnessed a fight a couple rows in front of us. It wasn't quite a gameday brawl, more of an older Cardfan getting infuriated at a loud Seahawks fan when the Hawkfan decided it'd be a good idea to stand up and shout, "This is OUR HOUSE!" The older guy politely made his way along the row and proceeded to yell at the Hawkfan until he'd riled himself up enough to throw a punch. Sadly, he must have been pretty inebriated himself because what he had in team loyalty he lacked in coordination, aim and muscle power. I'm afraid that dodging his punch was neatly achieved on the Hawkfan's part by merely standing still.

Anyway, we had a great time despite Russell getting heckled a little for wearing the Seahawks jersey. As always, we had a great time with these guys and were sad to see them go!

A New Patio

We finally got some patio furniture! (It's only taken us 12 months!) We've always wanted to have a table and chairs to enjoy some outdoor dining, but it just wasn't at the top of our priority list.

However, just in time for our out of town guests (Russell and Alexa) to come, we bought a table and four chairs. Check it out:
And you can see that the oranges on our orange tree are finally ripening in the background! (This picture was actually taken last weekend, and the oranges are just about ready to eat now.)

Would you believe me if I told you that the table isn't wood? It looks just like it, but it's actually aluminum. I like it because it's lightweight, it'll survive the weather better and is super comfy. Michael prefers sitting without those extra pillows at the back, but I like the support!

Now we're ready for some outdoor meals now that the weather is so mild!

Limited Resources

Sorry for the delay in blogging. It’s not that I don’t have things that I want to share, it’s that I don’t have the means.

Our computer at home is basically shot. Between regular re-starts and re-setting of the internet, freeze-ups and overheating, my already limited patience with the thing is basically up. This means that I don’t really have a place to, for example, upload and then post pictures of our great weekend with Russell and Alexa in town. Maybe I'll have better luck tonight. I don’t even really have a place from which I could blog. I’m posting this blog from my work computer on my lunch break. Even then, I’m not entirely sure if I’m allowed to or not except that I keep catching my coworkers looking at Facebook and Gmail and Youtube at their computers, so I’d be pretty upset for getting in trouble for doing this one thing.

I’m so excited for the holidays. I know I’m not supposed to start celebrating Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but I can’t help myself. I broke out my favorite Christmas music mix in October and am thrilled to find myself one week away from Thanksgiving!

Yesterday I rode my bike to the library. I strolled inside, walked immediately to the help desk and asked for assistance. I told the lovely woman that I needed an Romance audio book that had to do with Christmas. She didn’t even blink. “Okay, well, we only have two specific titles at this location…” I’m thrilled to report that I’m listening to an audiobook that is predictable and has obsolete dialogue and it’s during Christmas and I’M LOVING IT.

Any chance Michael will let us put up lights early this year?

Halfway Through!

Here's my 20 week belly:

You might not believe me, but I think I've "popped" a little more even since this picture was taken. Yesterday at work I had two people realize I was pregnant and Michael agrees that it seems my belly came out of nowhere in the past few days. I might have to start taking pictures every week instead of every two weeks.

I know it might not look like much, but it looks a little better if you compare it to where I started!

Just Call Me Ralph

Weeks pregnant: 20
Days without taking Zofran: 2
Times I puked while brushing my teeth this morning: 1

That’s if you don’t count how I started puking, then stopped, then started again. So, technically 1.5.

When I was about 12 weeks I got my haircut and told the hairdresser about all the nausea I’d had. She told me that she would bet I was having a girl because girls are so hormonal, and having your own pregnancy hormones combined with a hormonal girl inside would make you extra sick. I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Now I’m wondering if maybe I’m the crazy one. Why am I still sick? I was doing so well! I’d gotten down to taking only one Zofran in the morning and feeling practically normal for the rest of the day, so when the prescription ran out I thought I’d be fine without it. Two days of queasiness later, Welcome to Vomitville. Population: 1. Mayor, Treasurer and Party Planning Chairman: Julie.

Sometimes I try to be dramatic and cough out little cryptic complaints in between heaves (“This sucks”), but I was so surprised to be yakking once again that I forgot to this morning.

QUEASINESS: IF YOU RUIN THANKSGIVING FOR ME, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!

In other news, Michael’s the sweetest husband and soon-to-be father of all time. Last night he didn’t mind at all that I hiccupped and burped from the couch (I know I’m gross, but the burps really do help my stomach. But will Michael ever find me attractive again?!?!) while he toiled away hanging things on the walls and putting books back on the bookshelves in time for our guests this weekend. These two cool cats are coming out to see us:
Russell was Michael’s Best Man and Alexa is one part sassy fashionista and one part sweetest girl alive. Can't. Wait.