Lately

I'm playing a bit of catch-up here since Father's Day and our four-year anniversary have passed since my last post...two big days!

First was Father's Day. Brendan insisted that I not make a big deal out of it yet. I think his thoughts are that besides the work put into the nursery and that kind of thing, he hasn't really had to do anything fatherly yet, but I beg to differ. I'm already so proud of the father he will be to our little girl and how super helpful and supportive he's been to his baby's mama. I can't for him to get to hold her (and see how heavy this little booger is that I've been carrying ;).

Not only am I so lucky to have an amazing dad for my little girl, I'm pretty darn lucky to have a great dad myself. Though we live a few states away, I hope he knows how often he is thought of, prayed for, and loved.

Love you, Dad!!

Just a few days after celebrating Father's Day, we celebrated four years of amazing marriage! I know that sounds cheesy, but this is my blog, and I'm preggo, so I'll take license to sappy from time to time. And I feel like now's a good time for it!

It was a completely beautiful night downtown. We hung out at the waterfront for a while and upon my friend Abbie's advice, drove around several cobblestone streets and ate deliciously spicy Thai food at Basil, in hopes that maybe it would help convince Eva that coming into the world would be a super fun thing to do on our anniversary.

Welp, no such luck. My due date's a week and a half away, and I wish I could speed up the clock (the doc said she's in position and could come any day now), but I have to remind myself to just enjoy the calm and quiet now...before everything changes! :)

On the agenda this week: lots of yoga ball bouncing, walking & spicy food. Stay tuned...

16 Weeks + TGIF

Sixteen-week belly! Here it is. I've felt preggo for a long time, but now I'm finally starting to look it! This morning when I looked at myself in the mirror I felt like the bump had just popped out overnight. And I swear I've felt a few faint flutters. But I've also been eating a lot of broccoli...so...

Anyway. Have I mentioned how much I love Fridays? Duh, everyone likes Fridays but Fridays are Brendan's Saturday and this morning, in a record-breaking turn of events, we slept in till 10:30, hung out downtown, ran into some long lost friends, had coffee at Kudu, and are now vegging on the couch watching crime shows. De. Lightful.

And on the books for tomorrow: painting the bathroom. Can't wait:)

Hope your weekend's grand!

Hello, 2012!

Happy New Year!! Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season. It was an interesting one for us. For the first time ever, we spent Christmas day at home. It was the first time in a while that Brendan's family was all able to spend it together and it was really nice. The week before was busy for Brendan, since we had six Christmas services and he had to be at each one. But come Christmas day, the food was good, I felt good all week. It was great.

Then came Monday morning. My family had put off their normal Christmas dinner and festivities until we got up there, so we got up super early to hit the road at 5:30 am. It was good because we made really good time, but it was also the beginning of more sickness for me. Basically, I was sick/sleeping the whole way up, and while I thought it was just the car ride, the sickies didn't stop there. I was sick pretty much every day, but was able "woman up" as my mom says, to get through and had a really nice time relaxing with family. I pretty much laid around on the couch the whole time and we ended up leaving a day early. Que cera cera.

So given that little holiday recap, I have to say I feel a bit a whiney. I don't think I've been able to write one post since announcing the pregnancy that hasn't mentioned being sick and I really hate that. But at the same time, I have to be honest. I had completely underestimated the potential for feeling crappy while preggo.

At my old job, I worked with pregnant women all the time who occasionally had a bad day, but for the most part just carried on as usual. I'll just say that has not been me. This has really been a challenging time. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't work from home. There's absolutely no way I'd be able to go into an office everyday.

Yesterday was the start of my second trimester and I thought for sure I'd be over this by now. And while I have had some really good days, I would have never imagined that I'd kick my second trimester off hugging the toilet all day and have a pretty lame head cold on top of that, for which I can take no medicine.

I haven't been able to gain any weight, and the last time I stepped on the scale I was down another two pounds, which in normal circumstances would be great, but in my head, it just stresses me out and makes me worry that I'm doing something wrong. The last time I talked to my doctor about it, when I had been really sick, he told me it was very common and as long as I was able to stay hydrated, he wasn't worried. But now that I'm further along, I feel like I should be able to eat more and drink more water without fear of throwing it all back up.

Our next doctor's appoint is Wednesday and I'm sure everything will be fine, it's just so easy to get caught up the "what if's," especially if all you can do sometimes is lay on the couch while your brain is going a mile a minute.

I'm really trying to hold on to this verse that's the background of my phone:

"Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through the deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown."

Isaiah 43:1b-2

So even though this hasn't been the walk in the park I thought it would be, it's good to know that I have nothing to be afraid of and that I'm not alone. And maybe in a few weeks, I'll even be back to normal! We'll see! Maybe I'll even get around to prettying up enough to finally take some baby bump picks. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves...

Well...

Baby belly picks didn't happen like I thought they would yesterday. Mostly because Friday consisted of a drive back from Greenville, toward the end of which I freaked everyone out with threats to throw up, an almost six hour nap, and watching Home Alone.

Tomorrow I'll be twelve weeks and while the some of the yuckiness has subsided, I'm still not feeling super hot. So if I can bring myself to look somewhat photo-worthy today, they might happen.

Additionally, I have not done any Christmas shopping and most of my clothes are still in boxes.

The end.

Christmas YAY

So I know I mentioned before that we put our tree but not the ornaments. This is why.

G loves hanging out in the tree. She might be the only ornament we need.

In other Christmas decoration news, our house is the definitely the best looking of all on our street. We may or may not have gone to such extreme measures as using our neighbor's car in lieu of a latter for putting lights on our palm tree. I have better pictures, but here are a few from my phone.

And one more thing. It's cold. I thought I'd miss cold Christmases when we first moved here. I was wrong. For one thing it is cold here and for another I'm not into it. Gimme 60 degrees!

Aaaand one last thing. I love Charlie Brown Christmas. It is better than all other Christmas movies.

That is all.

A Message From the Blogger Impaired

Ello ello! This is the time I should say something like "Ohh I'm so sorry I haven't blogged in a long time" or talk about how ridiculously busy I am or give a whitty list of possible reasons why I haven't been able to blog including but not limited to: loss of fine motor skills, an unsuccessful encounter with a samurai which rendered me handless or slipping into a comatose state initiated by over-consumption of the typical holiday goodies starting with Halloween (a likely scenario).

Mais non. I will not bore you with such tacky antics. I have not blogged. That's that. Now I am blogging. Yay!

Let's start with Halloween. We went trick-or-treating with our nephew and brother and sister-in-law. It was fun and Hayden and his buddy Landon were the cutest kids on the block. Seriously.

Brendan tried but he couldn't really pull it off...

Ha.

And basically since Halloween to Thanksgiving we've been working like crazy people and time not spent at work has been a blur of football, chili, friends and cats breaking things.

Thanksgiving was a short trip up to Raleigh to spend some time with the fam. I have to say that I am so amazed by the men that my brothers are becoming. I feel like just yesterday they were smelly little dirty boys who asked awkward questions and couldn't pronounce their r's. Now we always seem to slip into conversations that leave me in awe of how smart and grown-up they are. I ♥ them.

Grandma sunk the bag on her first shot. And quit while she was ahead. She's a smart cookie.

And that brings us to now. We've completed approximately 87% of our Christmas shopping which I am very proud of/relieved about since it's not even December. We've also put up our Christmas tree (still needs to be decorated) and have decked out the outside of house with the help of our neighbors who coincidentally have the same affinity for putting Christmas lights everywhere as we do. I'll put up some pictures once it's done.

In other news, I made my first ever successful cheesecake (chocolate with chocolate ganache- yeah, yum). It wasn't burned and it wasn't gooey. It was a Christmas miracle. And it didn't even look too lumpy or misshapen as one might come to expect from me. I was going to photo-document this momentous occasion in my otherwise bleak baking repertoire, but our aforementioned neighbors and Brendan got to it before my camera did. It may or may not have been our dinner. Don't judge us.