treading water

Well, I've already failed pretty spectacularly at keeping up with this blog.  My plan was to post every four weeks with a picture and how I was feeling so that I could look back and remember this pregnancy.  And now we are thirteen weeks since my last post.  Go me!  I had so many plans, and if I give myself time to think about how many things I have not done in the past thirteen weeks, then I can't stop crying.  The truth is, life is just a massive speeding train right now, and I'm doing my best to not fall off.  I can't read pregnancy books right now that tell me how many servings of vegetables and grams of calcium to eat per day and how many times I should sit down and spend time thinking about and talking to my daughter.  The truth is, I'm doing well to eat three meals a day that do not consist of cookies.  I am doing well to stop and sit down for five minutes because my feet are so swollen, let alone stopping and having some cheesy mother/daughter moment whilst doing so.  I am doing well lately to get five hours of sleep during the week.

Actual pregnancy has not been difficult.  I have been very lucky.  The weight gain has been hard to swallow, just because I'm so short and I already have a very unhealthy relationship with my body weight.  But really that's the worst of it, so my own vanity can just deal with that.  I am lucky that my swollen Fred Flintstone feet go back down while I rest at night (only to swell up again the next day).  I haven't been having any Braxton-Hicks or any weird pains or symptoms, and I feel this little wiggle worm going crazy every day.  These things do make me extremely happy.

I find myself getting angry because this is not how first pregnancies are supposed to be.  I've gotten a lot of comments from people who already have multiple children about not sleeping and forgetting stuff and barely making it through their second pregnancy.  Like, "welcome to motherhood!"  I get that - I do, but this is my first.  It's not supposed to be like this yet, because I'm not pregnant and chasing a toddler.  I'm supposed to be able to nap and eat ice cream whenever I want, and make stupid artwork for the baby's room.  I'm supposed to have time to pore over the irritating books.  I'm supposed to be washing tiny clothes and setting up a changing table.  That's what people get to do during their first pregnancies, and I feel like I'm being cheated.

October is my very favorite month of the year, and I have missed it all.  I have not gotten to enjoy life during October because I've been gone from home going on four weeks.  I have worked literally 75-80 hour weeks this month and I have lived out of a hotel.  I missed decorating for Halloween and our third anniversary.  I missed being home for the changing of the weather and the obnoxious pumpkin spice lattes.  I missed our family beach vacation and seeing my niece play in the sand for the first time.  I'm spending my birthday (tomorrow) away from my husband and family.  I love trying cases - I really do - but I cannot even begin to express how difficult this has been doing it while pregnant and when I want more than anything in the world to be home getting ready for this baby.  It's hard not to feel cheated and  about this whole thing.

When all of this is over and I'm back home for good, I plan to post again.  And hopefully I'll be less grumpy.  For now, here is a catch up of all of my photos from the past thirteen weeks.

(28 weeks.  I didn't have my board.)

sixteen weeks*

• The Baby:  Size of a turnip.  So far all of the routine prenatal tests have had good results and I have confirmed the presence of 2 arms and 2 legs via ultrasound.  I think I felt some movement once, but really I have no idea.  We find out the sex in ten days!  
• How I Feel:  Still feeling great with no major complaints!  Starting to get a little uncomfortable at night, but this guy has fixed that.  Heartburn is starting to rear its ugly head as well as whatever pain you get in your sternum (either heartburn or my ribs moving apart??)  Overall though, I feel really good.
• How Wes Feels:  Excited.  I think it is starting to feel more real to him as my belly grows.  He finally realized that I am not poking it out on purpose.  I think he is in for a shock as to how big it will get, as he already thinks my belly is "gigantic."
• Weirdest Thing:  The stranger comments..."was this planned?"
• Biggest Surprise So Far:  How everything already feels like a competition.  I am hyper aware of the "mommy wars" (and determined not to participate), but I was less aware that this started during pregnancy.  Advice would be one thing - annoying at times, but fine.  But so many people want to tell me what I must do.  I must deliver at this hospital, I must buy this one specific item, I must buy all of my maternity clothes at this store.  I am tired of explaining why I'm not delivering at the one hospital in Atlanta nicknamed "The Baby Factory."  Finding my way in things I do has always been important to me - be it finding a brand of something I like or the hospital I want to deliver at.  I have been surprised at how taken aback some people are when I don't just instantly follow the herd on certain things.  Second surprise: how much my belly grew in 4 weeks!!  (see below)
• Cravings: Spicy food!  This has been fun for me because I generally do not like super spicy food.    And ice cream, still.

*This is late, I'm past 17 weeks now.

kitchen: better late than never

We've been in this house for, ahem, a year and we haven't really done as many projects as I had imagined.  It's hard, it's overwhelming, and staying on top of 2 acres of yard is no small task when you are terrible at it.  Seriously, our yard is insane and needs so much work right now.  It also seems like every time we talk about a new project (bedroom furniture, new carpet) we are hit with a four-figure bill for removing a family of raccoons from the attic and repairing all of their damage.  I wish this wasn't true.  Seriously though, before we moved in, I imagined our weekends being like a Lowe's commercial: lots of smiling, laughing, and "after" pictures.

Yea.  What those ads don't show is all of the crappy prep work, moving the furniture and random crap that is everywhere in your house, and the endless clean-up work.  They don't show the times when your husband knocks a hole in the drywall with a hammer.  Twice.  I'm also not sure how these people have so much energy on a Saturday morning after working all week?  I feel like this is a more accurate representation of a Saturday morning:

Now we now have about six months to get some serious painting/decorating/general work done.  What can I say?  I have always worked better under a deadline.   One room that I wasn't able to deal with after we moved in was my pistachio-green kitchen.  My parents helped us repaint and I decorated that room last September.  Hooray!  One room down.  Only eight to go.

Kitchen/Breakfast Room: Before

Kitchen/Breakfast Room: After

twelve weeks

Needless to say, we are thrilled.  We found out at the end of April and I'm not entirely sure it has sunken in yet!  We are definitely ready for this phase of our lives though.  Not sure I can say the same for the cats.  Time will tell with those two.

12 weeks

• The Baby:  Size of a lime and, according to my last ultrasound, I can confirm at least one arm and one leg.  
• How I Feel:  Pretty good, actually.  Early pregnancy was not bad at all.  The worst symptoms I had were being really bloated and really, really tired.  I didn't have any morning sickness and the only food aversion I had was the smell of coffee.  That has already improved.   The first several weeks I napped a LOT.  Doing something like one load of laundry would make me so tired that I'd sleep for an hour.  Craziness.  That is getting better, too.
• How Wes Feels:  Broke.  We are doing fine in the grand scheme of things, but no matter what my beloved accountant is going to worry endlessly about running out of money.  He refers to Buy Buy Baby as "bye bye money," and I've only shopped there twice so far...it's going to get much worse.  But he's so excited for this baby...this is just his primal "provider" role coming into play, I suppose.
• Weirdest Thing:  A crazy powerful sense of smell.  Example: one Saturday Wes was mowing the lawn and spilled some gasoline on the patio that is outside of the basement and in the backyard.  I came come from running errands and walked in the kitchen (an entire floor above where the gasoline was, and indoors) and smelled the gasoline instantly.  We had to open windows because it was such a strong smell to me. 
• Biggest Surprise So Far:  I had always heard that you don't show until you're about 3 months along.  Which is true, the "baby" doesn't show before then, but what they don't tell you is that you do start to show something.  That something is gas and bloating.  I certainly don't have washboard abs, but I thought I would be plugging along in my regular pants with no evidence of a pregnancy until about 12 weeks.  Not so much.  I think that as soon as I took the pregnancy test I started expanding.  Regular pants were not comfortable at all.  I've been in actual maternity pants since about 9-10 weeks!  These women who say they don't need maternity clothes until 5 or 6 months...I'm not sure who they are.  They are aliens.  Or at least they are taller than 5 feet...that has to have something to do with it.
• Cravings: My secretary asked if I was having any cravings, and I told her "yes...food."  Although I could have said Chick-Fil-A.  If I gave in to that craving, I would eat CFA every day.   Early on I craved things like ice cream and cookies which is not a normal thing for me - I have always been more of a salty snacks gal.  

the golden goose

I almost named this post "to blessed to be stressed," but then I remember that I seriously dislike those kinds of platitudes and cliche sayings.  So I didn't.  But in reality, that's kind of how I feel.  Like, I'm totally grateful for this house and space but I'm also so totally overwhelmed and stressed.  And my brain is like, stop being stressed because things are good, lady!  Remember how you begged for this dang house for months years?  But then my eyes see the stuff in the boxes and the empty rooms and the mint green paint in the kitchen and I'm reminded of how much work there is ahead of us.

I have always lacked patience.  It may be my worst quality.  (If you have another suggestion for "my worst quality," kindly keep it to yourself.  I'm not impatient for that information.)  My utter lack of patience is the reason why I have trouble sticking with diet & exercise plans.  It's why I have trouble finishing my scrapbooks.  It's why when I do chores, I wander off and start working something else before I finish the first thing, all the while being exasperated that nothing is finished.  In short: I like results and I like them quickly.

Ideally, moving day would have gone something like this:

All of the boxes are packed perfectly and labeled.  All of the purging of the useless junk has been done - by someone other than me - and hence there is nothing in the perfect boxes that lacks purpose and meaning.  Everything was dusted and polished before being boxed up.  The books were organized by genre and then alphabetized.  You get the picture.  The friendly movers move all of these boxes and furniture into the house, and Wes and I share a bottle of wine and smile knowingly at each other in our new home.  Then, a quirky coming-of-age song plays over a montage of us unpacking boxes, laughing while putting away dishes, raking leaves, painting, putting tile up in the remodeled bathroom, and hanging curtains.  At the end of the song, the house looks like a Pottery Barn/Etsy collaboration and absolutely no time has passed in real life.

In reality, moving day weeks have gone like this:

Things are haphazardly thrown into boxes, trash bags, and laundry baskets.  Every time a piece of furniture was moved by the movers, seven cubic feet of cat hair emerged.  All of our things are coated in a protective layer of dust.  Instead of sorting through junk drawers and piles, those are just dumped into giant Ziploc bags to be dealt with at a later date.  A closet door is opened and a mover is suffocated by pounds and pounds of cat hair.  Despite having already boxed up nine hundred pairs of socks and 14,000 t-shirts, they continue to multiply like Gremlins.  The boxes continue to pile up in the house yet there is no furniture in which to put the things that are in the boxes.  There is one box filled entirely with cat hair.  Six weeks later, I still can't find any socks or baking sheets.

To keep my sanity, I have decided to focus on small things at a reasonable pace.  It's seriously hard though, because, you know, patience.  I don't have any.  At all.  But in an effort to give it the 'ol college try, here are some little things that I am really loving:

This big comfy chair that is my chair despite its furry tenants.

This tile in the downstairs bathroom.

All of these cabinets!

Seriously, more cabinets that I've ever had.  Ever.

Our little waterfall.

The little hook outside of this kitchen window where I was able to hang this fern.

A Tale of Two Cats

So, we aren't fully moved in to the house yet, but we are totally staying here.  I mean, obviously, right?  We almost slept here on the floor Friday night after closing but decided against it since we had a day of moving ahead of us.  We aren't 20 years old anymore, amiright? And since we are here, we had to bring the cats!  They are both doing fine now and seem to enjoy their new house.  However, their initial reactions to coming here could not have been more different.  I think we could learn a little something from both of them.  That's right, learning from cats.

Scout

Scout is a lot like me.  Trusting.  Open.  Sometimes to a fault, which can lead to embarrassment or hurt.    For both humans and cats.  Scout was plopped down in the new house and she instantly trotted out to explore.  She wasn't suspicious at all.  We knew that she was safe in the house, but she didn't know that.  She brazenly scooted from room to room as if every room was filled with Friskies and catnip.  Not a worry in the world, seemingly unaware that there may be people out there who don't have her best interests in mind.  She ran down into the dark, unfinished basement and poked her fluffy little cat face into every corner, and then ran up to me with whiskers filled with cobwebs.  She let it all hang out in one of the upstairs bedrooms (see above) without knowing who might be looking.  Scout jumped in to this new house experience with all four paws.

Ollie

If Scout is more like me, Ollie is more like Wes.  Extra, extra cautious.  Nervous.  Deliberate.  While Scout immediately set out to explore, Ollie made himself as small as possible and trusted nothing.  He spent three hours smushed behind a piece of insulation in the basement studs.  In the dark.  With bugs.  He then spent 48 hours underneath the bed (see above), refusing food and water.  He was seriously dramatic.  Nothing could pry him out from underneath that bed, as he regressed into a downward spiral of worry and dread about what horrors lay before him in this house.  Much like my sweet husband, Ollie just needed a little prod to get him over the anxiety hurdle.  Not one hour after we took the bed apart, giving him nowhere to hide, he was trotting around the house like he had been living here for years.   Like he's asking us, "what were you guys so scared about?  This house is great."  

So what have we learned?  As with most adorable animal stories, we learned that the place to be is somewhere in the middle.  Just right.  Not too hot, not too cold.  You know the drill.  From Scout, we can learn that new beginnings can be exciting.  From Ollie, we can learn maybe you shouldn't just shove your whiskers into unfamiliar cobwebs quite so soon.  Spend a little time checking things out, but open yourself up to new experiences after that short period.  Little bit of country mouse, little bit of city mouse.  Position yourself somewhere between full belly exposure and extreme insulation immersion.

Like I said, Wes and I are a lot like these stinking cats.  Despite having been burned once by the housing market (thanks financial collapse!), I have been more than ready to jump into homeownership again with all four paws.  I've been completely trusting that everything will be totally fine this time around (and, fyi, it will because this time I have Wes).  Nothing can possibly stop me from my dream of  domesticity - not interest rates, not radon mitigation systems, not holes in the roof, and not closets full of random extension-cords-to-nowhere nailed to the wall.  (That's for serious.)  Wes has always approached things with pragmatism.  He is concerned with boring things like "paying the bills" and "structural soundness" and "insurance."  We make an excellent team, however.  I dream the dreams, and he makes them happen.  Like, actually makes things happen.  While I'm running around frenetically, shoving my face in every real estate listing that pops up on homes.com, Wes patiently removes the cobwebs from my whiskers and saves money and researches mortgages.  We like to think that the end result of our two drastically different approaches has had a pretty fantastic ending.  We seriously love it here.

Also: never, ever go on a hunger strike, even if it's just for 48 hours under someone's bed.  That's just ridiculous.

Those Old Georgia Pines

I wanted to share this awesome picture that my uncle took in our almost-backyard this past weekend when we had family in town from Alabama.  I wasn't able to show them the inside of the house, but we spent some time touring the outside!  The only thing missing in this picture is Wes.