Friday, November 19, 2010

Seven I'm-feeling-sick Takes

1. I like creamy peanut butter, but Thomas likes crunchy. Since I almost never eat peanut butter and he eats it fairly frequently (and does the grocery shopping), we only have crunchy peanut butter in the house. But when I’m pregnant I live on peanut butter sandwiches. Sometimes they’re the only thing I can keep down. I’ve been eating 2 a day for a while and the crunchy peanut butter is driving me crazy. The peanuts get stuck in my gums! It hurts!

2. The pregnancy nausea has been getting worse and worse all week. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just trying to keep my head down and slog through. Only 11 weeks to go!

3. Have I mentioned we have both sides of the family over to our house on Thanksgiving? It means we don’t have to travel at all or spend all weekend going from house to house. This year, Thomas is going to do the turkey in his smoker.

4. He’s never done this before (although he’s make tons of stuff in his smoker), so he invited our friends over on Saturday for a practice run. I’m looking forward to it, but our house is a mess and being nauseous all the time doesn’t really make me want to clean. It’s not a problem, though, because Thomas is a rock star and he’s been cleaning a room every night (after making dinner AND washing the dishes). I’m quite spoiled.

5. Since I feel sick a lot of the time I’ve lost interest in a lot of things. Pretty much anything that requires expending more than the bare minimum of energy. I read over some of my blog posts from this week and they don’t really seem to flow well. Or make a lot of sense. Can I claim pregnancy brain?

6. It also seems the length of the posts directly corresponds to how sick I feel. I can usually manage one good meal a day and if I write after that, I can talk about anything at length. If I wait until the evening, I’m usually too busy trying not to throw up on the keyboard to write anything of substance.

7. I’m going to bed now. So what if it’s only 8:30? At least when I’m sleeping I’m not throwing up. I’m really starting to think NaBloPoMo was a BAD idea since its turning into all nausea talk, all the time.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

There's actually a baby in there!

We spent a lot of time in doctor's offices today.  I brought Meg to my first OB appt - DURING naptime.  It actually went really well.  And hey, there's really a baby in there!  With a hearbeat!  (Just one baby, thank goodness.)  After my appointment, we had to rush straight to the pediatrician for HER appointment (still during naptime), because she caught pinkeye at daycare.  Which means soon I'll have pinkeye and I'll have to fit in another doctor's appointment next week.  I'm sounding complain-y, but we actually had a great day and I'm in a good mood.  Meg was an angel all afternoon, even though she had pinkeye and a fever and she slept for two hours once we got home (although she'd only sleep if I rocked her). 

Hearing the heartbeat made the nausea easier to deal with.  I'm actually sick for a REASON!  How long do you think this will last?  (Probably until I get pinkeye.)

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Sharing Food

I’m not very good at sharing food. I take the amount of food I want and I want it all. If Thomas asks for a bite, I usually make a face, give a huge sigh, and say ‘take a SMALL bite’. I get especially annoyed if what I have is a special treat – like Oreos.  I often give him a dirty look and say ‘get your own’. I’m not a hypocrite, though. I almost never ask Thomas for his food, because if I don’t want to give up mine, why should he give up his?

I have gotten better – since Meg ALWAYS wants some of what I’m eating, I take extra to start with. But what has really helped is being pregnant. I have zero interest in food. The fact I have to eat annoys me to no end. No matter what I have on my plate, I don’t really want it. So if you’d like some, have at it. I’m sharing more than I ever have. I tell Thomas to take a BIG bite; I give Meg much more than I used to. I think being generous with what I have is a really good thing and I hope I can carry it over once I start to like food again, but it’s probably not likely. What hugely pregnant woman wants to give up her food?

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Thoughts on potty training

When do girls usually potty train? Around 2? 2 ½? Thomas' cousin potty trained her daughter at 18 months, which seemed crazy early to me, but it worked. Meg is showing some signs of potty-training readiness, but I have ZERO DESIRE to get started. Diapers are just so EASY. I don’t have to hound my child – ‘Do you need to go now? How about now? Now? How about just trying to go before we get in the car?’ I don’t have to immediately scope out the nearest bathroom in every public place in case she suddenly has to go. I don’t have to bring 5 changes of clothes in case she has an accident. Or stop every half an hour on car trips to find a bathroom.

I like diapers. They’re convenient. I haven’t ever been caught without a diaper when one was desperately needed, so why would I want to potty train her and risk being caught without a bathroom in sight when one is desperately needed?  The thought of having two kids in diapers doesn’t bother me at all. I have never minded diapers. I’ve always planned on ‘wait until they’re ready (REALLY ready)’ since I think I prefer diapers over potty training. Now I’m just worried Meg will be ready before I am!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Always Finishing Things, part 2

Since writing yesterday’s post, I can’t stop thinking of more things I have to “finish.”

In middle school, I really wanted to quit Girl Scouts. At the time, I just didn’t like it. But I couldn’t bear to quit –what if I miss out on something? By high school, I was glad I hadn’t quit, but there were a couple years where I slogged through it. Over the years, there have been several other things I’ve wanted to quit, but couldn’t.

I also keep watching TV shows I don’t like, because I figure I’ve put in enough time watching it so far, I might as well keep watching it and see if it gets better. I don’t want to someday see a promo for a new episode, think it looks good and be mad at myself for dropping the show. I’ve actually gotten better about this one since having Meg, since I have less time to watch TV. I had to drop some shows and it was actually freeing! It felt great to stop watching shows I wasn’t getting anything out of.

I also read every page of magazines before recycling them. My favorite magazine is Marie Claire. I get excited every month when it arrives. I slog through some of the features at the beginning of the magazine that I care about, so I can get to the articles, which I DO like. In most magazines, the articles are the only part I really like. The other stuff is okay, but if I really think about it, for me, they’re not worth the time it takes to read them. But I read them anyway. I can’t NOT read them. What if I miss out on some great tip?

Writing it all out like that makes it look like I have some form of OCD. Maybe I do. But it’s not so much that I have a compulsive need to finish everything, it’s more that I have a fear of missing out on something. I hate feeling left out, so I do everything I can to not miss out. Although, I guess sometimes it is just a need to finish something, because how can I miss something by skipping an episode of Friends I’ve already seen twenty or thirty times?

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Always Finishing Things

I refuse to start anything partway through. I always have to do things in order. As I’ve said before, when I start reading a blog, I start at the beginning. Always. I can’t just start reading at the present day, because it takes a while to figure out who all the people are and there’s always history you don’t know. It feels like starting a book in the middle. It drives me crazy.

One of my favorite shows is Friends. I love it. I watch it a lot, but always in order. I watch every episode of all 10 seasons, then start over. I never skip an episode, even if it’s one I don’t like. Sometimes I’ll go awhile without watching Friends, because the next episode is one I don’t particularly like. I just can’t just skip it.

My husband sometimes finds a movie we like on TV and starts watching it – even if it’s already started. It drives me crazy. I don’t care if I’ve seen the movie 20 times and have the whole thing memorized, I CANNOT start watching it anywhere but the very beginning. If we missed the beginning, then I just can’t watch it.

Also, I always finish a book. Even if I am hating it. I have to read the whole thing to make SURE it doesn’t get better. What if the first half is terrible, but the second half is great? If I stop reading after the first half, I’ll be missing out. I can’t actually think of a time when the first half of a book was awful and the second half was good enough to make up for it. But I always finish the book anyway. I don’t understand people who can return half-read books to the library. Even if its overdue and I don’t like it, I keep it, finish it, and pay the fine. I PAY to read a book I don’t like!

Don’t even get me started on people who come back from vacation and say “my feed reader had 1000 unread posts, so I just hit ‘mark all as read!’” IT ALMOST MAKES MY HEAD EXPLODE.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Blathering!

I haven’t been quite sure what to say about the Blathering. I loved Elizabeth’s post, but I’m not quite to the ‘Just Friends’ point yet. I didn’t know any of these women existed until just over a year ago. I only started my blog (and started commenting on others) in February. I’m still new to the whole thing and prior to this weekend I would have said I had a few acquaintances inside the computer – we comment on eachothers’ blogs, but it’s not like we have conversations outside of the blog. Some of these women have been blogging for years and I read their archives, so I feel like I know them really well, but they don’t know that much about me.

Thomas and I are both 26 and are the ONLY people in our circle of friends with kids. I thought it might be strange to hang out with a bunch of people older than me, but it wasn't weird at all. It was great to be with a bunch of moms, especially since several of them are also pregnant.  It was also great to hang out with the non-moms:)  For me, the best thing about the weekend was getting to the point where I can call ALL of these people ‘computer friends’. I’m sure we’ll keep writing, reading, commenting, and talking, so I’m someday soon I WILL be able to call them ‘just friends’.

I’m really bummed I likely won’t be able to go to the Blathering next year, since I’ll have a 2 or 3-month-old baby. I’m considering crazy things – like having Thomas come too, so he and the baby can hang out at the hotel while I spend time with the girls, but that’s probably unrealistic. Although…the next Blathering will likely be in Austin and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law just moved to Texas this past weekend. Of course I have no idea whether they're near Austin and Texas is a HUGE state, but wouldn’t it be awesome if they were close?? We could all go down to visit them and I could spend a day or two with the Blathering ladies!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Seven Quick Takes

1. Meg goes to daycare on Tuesdays. I always drop off and Thomas always picks up. This Tuesday, he had a late meeting, so I picked up. As I walked up to her room, I saw Meg playing happily. The second she saw me, she threw down the toys and ran as fast as she could right into my arms. I almost cried. I don’t think anyone has ever been so excited to see me. I really need to daycare pickup more often.

2. I hate the idea of taking something to stay awake, so I’ve been trying to go without the diphenhydramine. It didn’t go well. I’ll be sitting on the couch, watching Meg play, then wake up a half hour later to a huge crash in the kitchen or Meg playing with my glasses while they’re still on my face. Yesterday, Meg wouldn’t nap. I tried everything. Finally I laid down on the floor next to the crib…and woke up an hour later confused and disoriented. I closed my eyes again, then woke up another hour later. I guess as long as I’m taking sleeping pills for nausea I’ll also have to have some way to keep myself awake.

3. My husband has a client meeting this afternoon near where his mom lives (3 hours away). He took Meg and they’re going to stay overnight. It feels really weird to have the house to myself! I stayed because I have two different get-togethers tonight, but now I’m annoyed about that. When I’m home alone, I like to make the most of my time – watch movies Thomas doesn’t like, order dinner, do whatever I want. I don’t want to LEAVE.

4. Even when I’m not nauseous, the thought of food turns my stomach. I’m dreading Thanksgiving. A holiday that’s almost entirely about food? Whose idea was THAT? It makes me feel sick just thinking about it. Also, we always host Thanksgiving at our house, so the whole house needs to be cleaned. Ick.

5. Unisom makes it really hard for me to wake up, so every morning I bring Meg into our bed and turn on Modern Family (I bought Season 1). She LOVES it. I feel like the new baby is already detrimental to Meg – before this she watched TV about once a month.

6. I have a bunch of those Younkers Community Day books we were selling for MOPS. They have to be used tomorrow and I have no desire to go shopping. I bought a bunch of maternity clothes last weekend. There’s no point in buying regular clothes. Meg doesn’t need clothes.

7. After 17 months of taking care of a child, I have NO attention span.  I can only do something for 15 minutes at the most before I expect to get interrupted.  It's kind of hard to fill the hours without my family when I can't focus on anything.  They left 2 hours ago and I've already cleaned the kitchen a little, took the trash out, went through the mail, ran to the post office, read some blogs, wrote this post, made lunch, ate lunch, watched Friends...maybe its a good thing I have plans tonight.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Pregnancy makes me boring, apparently

On Monday, I said the Unisom (diphenhydramine) was helping a little. Oops. Arwen set me straight – there are actually TWO different kinds of Unisom (which makes no sense to me) and I was taking the wrong one.

As an aside, I have to mention that one of the most annoying parts of pregnancy nausea is that WATER is the food/drink item I tolerate the WORST. A single sip of water can make me instantly throw up. So, since water increases my nausea (*sniff*), I had been taking the diphenhydramine with yogurt. I thought the diphenhydramine had been working a little, but after thinking about it decided it might have been the yogurt, since it’s a nice mix of carbs and protein.

Tuesday I took a few spoonfuls of yogurt every so often instead of diphenhydramine and it helped! The more yogurt I can eat, the longer my stomach feels better (in the morning I can usually only manage a couple bites, since yogurt has a texture that sometimes makes me gag even when I’m not pregnant).

After work on Tuesday, I went to Wal-Mart and bought the right kind of Unisom. It’s truly awesome stuff. I have felt a million times better since I started taking it. If I take it and eat yogurt throughout the day, I feel NORMAL. Not sick at all. Today, I tried taking it without yogurt and that didn’t go as well. I guess I need both.

It’s amazing to me that I can CONTROL the nausea. I will be very surprised if this baby isn’t a boy, because the nausea is a million times better than with Meg. The fact there’s anything that makes a dent in it is a major improvement. With Meg, NOTHING helped. Nothing at all. I tried everything. From the time I was 5 weeks until I was 18 weeks, I felt nauseous every second of every day. Each bite was a major struggle. Anytime I tried to swallow, my gag reflex made it almost impossible. I still can’t believe there are multiple things that make me feel better this time.

P.S. As I mentioned before, I have a unusual reaction to diphenhydramine – it makes me MORE awake instead of sleepy, like it does to most people. The RIGHT kind of Unisom, though, does make me tired. So I started taking it with diphenhydramine and the combo makes me feel great! I find it very ironic that taking one Unisom makes me very sleepy, but if I take BOTH kinds, they cancel each other out and I feel fine.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A Banner Day!

Note (on Thursday): I wrote this Wednesday morning and thought I'd published it, but just realized I only saved it as a draft.  I hit publish and it posted to Wednesday, so I'm going with it!  I don't know if this counts as a NaBloPoMo fail, but I don't think so...


Margaret is a very stubborn child. She has been VERY adamant that milk comes out of bottles and water comes out of sippies. Put milk in a sippy and she wants to know if you’ve lost your mind. That’s just not the way it’s DONE. We were hesitant to go cold turkey on the bottles because she has the stubbornness in her to go a week without milk just to prove her point. I didn’t want to take away the bottles until I’d called the doctor’s office to find out how long she can go without milk. I took her in last week (thought she might have an ear infection) so I asked and the doctor told me if we switched to sippies she probably won’t drink much milk and that is FINE. Totally normal, no problem.

So Monday night she had her last bottle and starting yesterday morning it was sippies or nothing. I thought daycare day would be a good day to start with the sippies, since all of the other kids in her class drink milk from sippy cups. In the past, if I gave her a sippy cup of milk, she would freak out and squawk at me until I poured the milk into a bottle. Today, she happily took the sippy and ran off. She didn’t drink a single drop, but she carried it all over the house and didn’t ask for a bottle.

At daycare, they offered her sippies of milk at snack times, which she didn’t drink. When I picked her up, I took the untouched sippies from the fridge, figuring we were in for a long haul. But when Meg saw me holding them, she wanted one. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to carry it around for a while, though I didn’t think there was any chance she drink it. I was wrong. She downed the whole thing! I was shocked!

I thought she must have been really hungry and wrote it off as a fluke. But she drank another sippy full of milk before bed! And this morning! I feel rather stupid. We dithered for WEEKS and it ended up taking less than 12 hours to make the transition.

P.S. We bought the sippies Mama Fuss recommended, which are basically bottles masquerading as sippy cups and also took her suggestion to use one kind of sippies only for water and a different kind only for milk.

P.P.S. She also came home NO diaper rash today! Not even a hint!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Wedding Dresses

While we were on our honeymoon, my mom paid to have my wedding dress cleaned and sealed in an archival box. Its sitting in the guest room closet in the basement. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s in a BOX, so I haven’t seen it since the wedding. I would love to be able to get the dress out every now and then to look at it. It definitely wouldn’t fit, but it has a corset back so I would probably be able to put it on if I didn’t lace it. I’m glad the dress will last, but for what? My mom still has her dress and neither my sister or I wore it. My youngest sister isn’t married yet, but I don’t see her wearing it, either. Some days I almost convince myself to rip open the box and hang the dress in the closet so I can look at it. It’s gorgeous. I want to see it!

They were talking about this on the radio a couple weeks ago and a woman called in to say twice a year, she puts on her wedding dress and deep cleans her house. She says gets so excited about getting to wear her wedding dress, it makes her look forward to cleaning. She has a fun weekend cleaning in the wedding dress and a tiara and feels she does a better job cleaning because she’s having so much fun and because her house needs to be clean enough for a princess (her). This really does sound like fun, but, as I said, my dress doesn’t fit. Also, I’m not sure I’d be able to take it when the dress got ruined. This woman's dress is covered in stains and has a burn.

I suppose I could use the dress as an incentive to lose weight. I maintained a strict diet-exercise regimen for over a YEAR prior to my wedding, to look as fantastic as possible in the dress. Every time I wanted to eat something bad for me, I’d focus on the wedding dress. I bet it would work again!  (although not while I'm pregnant)

What did you do with your wedding dress?

Monday, November 8, 2010

Bleargh

Over the weekend (specifically 4:30 am Sunday) I was run over by the nausea train. I now have 24 hour kill-me-now nausea, just like last time. It’s not quite as bad this time, since I started taking Unisom (I read Arwen’s archives when Meg was about six months old and immediately wanted to know WHY NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT UNISOM WHEN I WAS PREGNANT). It is helping - I take a 25mg pill every four hours and feel fairly good for the two hours in the middle. Good enough that if I time it right, I can eat a full lunch, which makes me feel better for the rest of the afternoon. And, bonus!, Diphenhydramine (Benadryl and Unisom are the exact same thing, just different dosages) has always made me hyper, not sleepy. Which, when combined with pregnancy tiredness, makes me feel NORMAL all day (not tired, not hyper). It’s honestly a miracle pill for me and I AM STILL TICKED NO ONE TOLD ME LAST TIME.

The stupid nausea makes me hate mornings all the more. When I wake up, I usually haven’t taken a pill for a while AND my stomach is empty, which makes it almost impossible to even MOVE without throwing up. Add in an energetic 17-month-old and I had a VERY difficult time talking myself into going to work this morning. The only thing that convinced me to go is that Thursday is a holiday, so I don’t have to work a full week. I don’t know how I’m going to drag myself to work for the next three months.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Appropriateness of Media

I’ve always gotten annoyed when parents complain about the general inappropriateness of TV and other media these days. I really don’t think it’s that hard to find an appropriate show and if you can’t do it, just don’t let your kid watch TV (ha ha ha). If you don’t think the shows your child wants to watch are appropriate, deal with it (pre-screen it, watch with them, ban the show, or whatever) and move on. STOP COMPLAINING. I’m not saying these people are wrong. There probably IS too much inappropriateness in TV shows and music for pre-teens today, but SERIOUSLY, I am SO SICK of the whining. Enough already!

However, once Meg started talking I started to notice there really are ‘bad words’ everywhere. I don’t want my baby saying ‘damn,’ but how do I stop her from hearing it? The other day I was listening to the radio in the car (I listen to country music) and Garth Brooks’ Rodeo came on. I love Garth Brooks and I was singing along. I wasn’t really thinking about the lyrics but after I found myself singing “that damned old rodeo” with emphasis on the word ‘damned,’ I realized I didn’t want Meg doing the same thing.

A couple of weeks ago on Top Chef: Just Desserts the head judge called someone a “crazy little bastard” (as a compliment). Meg wasn’t watching it with me, but I have let her watch Top Chef before. It should be obvious that Bravo is not an appropriate channel for kids. I know they allow things on Bravo that aren’t on network TV. But I really thought Top Chef was relatively harmless (depending on the contestants in any given season). If I’m watching it during naptime and Meg wakes up, I go get her then let her finish the show with me. I guess I can’t anymore.

Now, I’m not complaining about this stuff. I think it’s perfectly fine (though usually unnecessary) to have swearing in media meant for adults. I don’t think producers should have to change anything just because there might be children watching/listening, especially if it’s a show clearly marketed to adults. I guess I’m just annoyed Meg is getting to the age where we’ll be stuck with all kids music and kids TV all the time. I want to listen to MY music and watch MY shows, without thinking about whether they include swearing. At least I enjoy Veggie Tales...

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Things I've learned by reading the blogs of Blathering-goers

Shower bingo from Maureen. This was the only game we played at my sister’s bridal shower! I am never the person who has the good ideas for showers/parties and for my sister's shower I totally was. Thank you, Maureen!

How to fold a fitted sheet from Maggie. This has seriously changed my life (and my linen closet). I think of Maggie every time I fold a fitted sheet.

How to make a blog banner from Belle Plaine Living, which is how I finally got a banner after blogging for six months. And it was so easy!

Lots of great meals (and desserts) from Little Miss Mel (my favorite is the Turkey Teriyaki with Brown Rice.  Meg goes nuts for it).

Taking Unisom for morning sickness from Arwen. I’m definitely trying this! I already knew about taking Vitamin B, which didn’t help much when I was pregnant with Meg. Maybe the combo will work.

How to be a runner from Princess Nebraska.  Since I work from 7am-6pm 3 days a week, I really didn't have time to walk for an hour every day, so I jumped right into the Couch to 5K plan (on my husband's recommendation).  And seriously EVERY DAY I ran for the first 3 weeks or so I thought "I wish I had the time to be doing Princess Nebraska's how to be a runner BEFORE this."

Friday, November 5, 2010

Seven Things That Annoy Me

1. In our area (maybe everywhere?) kids often tell jokes when they’re trick or treating. I HATE this. The jokes are terrible, it takes longer, and I have to fake-laugh. I’m a Halloween grouch anyway. I wasn’t feeling very well and Thomas was busy with a project, so I had to answer the door and I just about pretended we weren’t home “so all the brats would go away.” I’m happy Halloween is over.

2. Campaign ads. I voted absentee two weeks before the election. Right before the election there was a radio ad SO ANNOYING I wanted to ask for my ballot back so I could vote against the person. It wasn’t even a negative ad! Just an annoying one!

3. Long drives by myself. This weekend I’ll drive 6 hours to Chicago and 6 hours home. It’s TOTALLY worth it (yay Blathering!), but what do you do for 6 hours? Can’t read, can’t watch TV, don’t have satellite radio, not a real fan of books on tape… I usually bring a portable DVD player and listen to my House DVDs (with the screen closed so there’s no temptation to look). I’ve seen the episodes many times, so I don’t really lose anything by not seeing the screen. But even that gets old after a few hours. I’m jealous of the people who are flying!

4. Fundraising. We are doing 2 fundraisers for MOPS right now. They’re not too hard to sell (Tastefully Simple and Younkers coupon books). I’m buying them myself, but I hate asking people to buy things. Last year I didn’t even try. This year I only asked family.

5. Setting unrealistic expectations FOR MYSELF. I feel like since I wrote this whole post on how people usually write throwaway posts during NaBloPoMo and I hate that, I can’t ever do it. I thought I was all set for NaBloPoMo, since I have a couple documents full of post ideas. But these post ideas are pretty much all one sentence or less. Now that the time has come to pick an idea every day and actually write about it, it seems like a lot more work than I thought it would be. I’m scared of the rest of the month!

6. Computer batteries. My laptop battery used to last an hour and a half. Not great, but good enough. I swear it did this as of a few weeks ago. Last night I turned the computer on (without plugging it in) to look something up quickly. The battery died in 10 minutes. I had barely gotten the computer started up!

7. Blogs that only offer an truncated feed. You know what I mean.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Sides of the Bed

For the longest time, I’ve ALWAYS had to sleep on the side of the bed furthest from the door. When I was younger (middle school age, I suppose?) I figured if someone broke into my room, the more space I had between them and me, the better. It would give me more time to react. In actuality, if anyone HAD actually broken in, it probably would have made zero difference. What was I going to do with that extra time? Jump out the window? (Actually, if the window was already open, that might have worked.) Whether it made sense or not, it made me feel more secure.

So I didn’t have a side of the bed. I always slept on the right side at home (because it was furthest from the door), but if were in a hotel or visiting people, I would sleep on the side furthest from the door, even if it was the left side. Thomas always insisted the left side of the bed was HIS and it really annoyed him when I’d make him sleep on the “wrong” side.

When we moved, I took over the left side of the bed, which took Thomas months to get used to. It’s actually closer to the door, but by that point, I had gotten so used to sleeping by the wall I had gone from having to sleep furthest from the door to having to sleep closest to the wall. That’s usually the same thing, but it isn’t in our bedroom (because the left side of our bed is up against the same wall as the door).

Then pregnancy changed that (along with many other things). Now, I must sleep on the left side of the bed. To go to sleep, I always lay on my left side and I have to be facing out or I get claustrophobic. There’s not enough air if two people are facing each other in bed. The last two times Andrew and I went out of town, I slept on the left side even though it was the side closest to the door AND furthest from the wall! If possible, I still want to sleep closest to the wall, so if we have our choice of several rooms I check them out and pick one where the left side of the bed is up against a wall. I’m hopelessly picky.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

You Read That Right

Yes, we’re having another baby! I’m due the end of June. We’re very excited, but I’m having a hard time preparing myself mentally for pregnancy. Last time I was really, really sick from 5 weeks until 18 weeks. I had such a hard time eating, I lost weight in that time period. For the last two weeks, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I eat everything in sight, figuring I won’t want to eat anything at all soon enough. Every morning I wake up and assess whether I feel like throwing up. So far, I feel fine if my stomach is empty (this was NOT the case last time), but instantly feel like throwing up every time I get a full stomach (so I basically snack all day). I alternate between trying to enjoy these last few days/weeks before I feel like I’m dying and telling myself I should act as if everything is normal and I’m not going to get hit with terrible nausea any day, since thinking about it does nothing but ruin these last few days/weeks.

I don’t have many pregnancy symptoms yet. I’m not excessively tired or excessively nauseous – I really don’t feel that different. It kind of makes it hard to convince myself I’m pregnant. I haven’t had any trouble not telling people, because it doesn’t seem real to me. If I say “I’m pregnant,” I feel like I’m making something up. Again, I alternate between wondering when it will feel real to me and hoping it doesn’t anytime soon, because I don’t want to be tired and nauseous all the time!

I called the ob/gyn office for an appointment two hours after I found out I was pregnant with Meg. This time it took me two weeks. The instant I found out I was pregnant with Meg, I felt like the whole world changed. I was going to have a BABY! We were going to be a FAMILY! This time, nothing really changed. I’m kind of freaked out about having two kids, but it hasn’t really sunk in. As I said, it doesn’t feel like anything is different yet. I know that will change soon enough, but having 17-month-old really takes your mind off being pregnant. I nearly bought a bottle of wine to go with our dinner last weekend, but at the last minute remembered I couldn’t drink it.

I didn’t think we’d get pregnant before the Blathering, so I figured it would be my last hurrah before pregnancy. At first I was kind of disappointed it’s not. It’s no fun being the only one not drinking. But it turns out 5 Blathering-ers are pregnant! It will still be a lot of fun, just different than I thought it would be. At least I won’t get a hangover!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

13 things you should know about me before the Blathering

1. I’m a cheap drunk. My parents and grandparents don’t drink at all. Ever. The concept of having a glass of wine with dinner is foreign to me. Sometimes Thomas and I will have a drink at home on a Friday night, but not that often. Usually I don’t drink at all unless we’re at an event where alcohol is an integral part of it, like when our friends had a wine tasting. As a result, I feel somewhat tipsy after one glass of wine and drunk after two. Give me three and I get CRAZY!

2. Another part of the reason I don’t drink much is that I don’t like wine. I pretty much never like wine until the second glass – and then I only like it because I’m already tipsy. There’s probably some wines I would like out there, but I’m not going to spend time and money searching for them. I prefer mixed drinks. A wine BUZZ, though, is awesome. Much better than the hard stuff.

3. My daughter’s name isn’t Meg. It happens to be the same name Maggie has. The name Maggie doesn't like and says you should never give your child! Oops!

4. My husband’s name isn’t Andrew. (Updated: I've edited the blog to change all the 'Andrews' - his blog alias - to 'Thomas' so this doesn't make much sense anymore.)

5. My name really is Jessica!

6. I’m a Republican, although I’m not a huge fan of all Republican candidates. I’m ALSO not a fan of Obama, so I won’t have much to contribute to a conversation about how great he is. I know there will be people from both sides of the aisle at the Blathering, so I assume we won’t be talking politics.

7. Unlike most of you, I have no desire to write a novel. I don’t want to write articles. I have no aspirations to get paid for writing. I do just fine writing about MYSELF, but I don’t like writing about anything else (especially fiction).

8. Lest all you writers think I’m completely crazy, I’ll tell you I do love READING and do it every chance I get. Mostly mysteries. But if YOU write a book, I’ll read it.

9. I know a lot of you are SAHMs. I work 32 hours a week, so I’m pretty far from being a SAHM. Since I’m home 1.5 days a week, I sometimes think I know what it’s like to be a SAHM, but I probably don’t.

10. I have strong feelings about what side of the bed I sleep on. I would like to say sorry in advance to my roommate at the Blathering.

11. I tend to talk to the TV, yelling things like “What are you doing?” “Why?” “What is SHE doing there?” It’s especially embarrassing when I’m watching something on my computer with headphones. Especially since I hate it when other people talk to the TV.

12. I’m six weeks pregnant, making items #1 and #2 irrelevant.

13. I hope I won’t be too nauseous to enjoy the blathering.

Monday, November 1, 2010

NaBloPoMo

I have mixed feelings about NaBloPoMo. I get really excited when some people do it. It’s fun to wake up every morning and have something new to read from my favorite people. On the other hand, some people just aren’t meant to post every day. For most of the year, people only write if something has happened or they have a specific topic they’d like to talk about. Generally, people write better when they have something specific to write about, not when they’ve written a blog post every day for 20+ days in a row, are all out of ideas, AND are out of town for Thanksgiving.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to picture posts or ‘this is what I’m making for dinner’ or ‘this is my new favorite product’. I just don’t like “Wow, is this month going to be over soon? I can’t think of anything to write about” or especially “I’m so busy all I can do is write a post about how I’m too busy to write an actual post.”

I suppose this reads like an explanation of why I’m NOT doing NaBloPoMo, but I am! I’m well aware I might not be very good at it, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Feel free to throw it in my face if I stoop to writing a post entirely about how busy I am.

P.S. I am SO not trying to be mean or pick on anyone’s blog in particular. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t do NaBloPoMo if you don’t think you’re good at it. If you want to do it, for whatever reason – because you think it will make you a better writer, because you want to document more of your life on your blog, or just because you want to – then do it! Don’t listen to me!

P.P.S. This post is not meant to say most people can’t hack NaBloPoMo, but I can because I’m awesome like that. Believe me. Its saying most people crash and burn by the end of NaBloPoMo (sometimes sooner), but I’m going to attempt it anyway, even though I will probably crash and burn, too. Because I want to.