Getting Ready To Relive Finals Week

Okay that is probably a little misleading, but we are going to make pizza and watch as many episodes of Arrested Development as we feel like.  Maybe not the best idea for the night before daylight savings but it sounds like a pretty perfect plan to me for a rainy night in March.  Spencer even gave Blitz a bath, so we won't mind her sitting on the couch by us.  Everyone's bringing their favorite toppings, so we'll see what kind of crazy pizzas we end up with.

Whew this was a long week.  Lots of draining days at work for both Spencer and I.  Lots of waking up in the middle of the night to Blitz scratching the floor and moving around on her dog bed in our room (solution: we moved her back to her crate, sorry Blitz but sleep is more important).  Lots of me waking up to charlie horses - apparently this is the new random side effect of pregnancy I get to experience.  I did ask the lady at yoga about it and she said the old wives tale is to put a bar of ivory soap at the bottom of the bed?!  I might just try it considering in the last week I've woken up three nights barely able to move my leg and then the next morning I get out of bed limping.  Then again I might try eating lots of bananas :).  Also I've started to have crazy pregnancy dreams.  First I dreamed I had a tiny baby (like think the size of a large potato), and I was back at work two days after giving birth trying to figure out breast feeding in my office.  And I was exploding milk everywhere.  Yeah I know freaky.  Then another night I dreamed it was a few days after giving birth and I couldn't remember if I had fed the baby or not and not just forgot one time, I couldn't remember if I had fed him at all since he had been born.  So weird how your brain chooses to process things you are worried about.   So yes, in between all of that, plus Spencer waking up thinking about work and me waking up worrying about my little it's been a bunch of not so restful nights.

Wow I didn't mean for this to be depressing. 

I've got a bunch of funny pictures from my work shower I keep meaning to put on here.  Seriously, I work with some of the most kind and humorous people ever.  They are really generous and really thoughtful, and I really do think I'm going to miss them while I'm on maternity leave.  I'll at least miss all the practical joking and instant messaging about the ridiculousness of office life.  In the mean time these are some of my favorite ladies there.  And just in case you can't tell three of us are pregnant.  One due next week, me due in May, one due in October and one has decided her current goal is to finish her MBA and then go on sweet Jenny and Spencer vacations as she's affectionately dubbed them which is totally fine by me. 

Okay I'm off to start the bacon for the pizza . . .

Texas Photo Montage



We're back!  Our two little mini vacations were wonderful and restful.  Now we are trying to get our motivation back to work on our pre-baby to do list, granted it's mostly self imposed, but some of it - like move our bedroom furniture out of the nursery and then move Noah's furniture into the nursery - should probably happen sometime soon!

 

Apparently it was too cold on our first mini vacation for me to take my hands, let alone my iphone out of my pocket much, so I have no pictures.  Plus, I was having to pause and catch my breath all the time, so I was slightly distracted by the slight suffication feeling at all times.  Thankfully, it must have just been the altitude since now that I'm back in Tulsa I'm having no trouble breathing, just trouble fitting in my clothes!  Other than the lack of air though, the trip was really relaxing.  Spencer skied two days while I had basically no agenda other than getting a prenatal massage and doing some window shopping with the girls.  Okay not entirely window shopping, I did get some cute jewelry at the outlet malls and a finally a chambray shirt!  Just in a size larger than I would normally need, oh the joys of figuring out what to wear while prego :).  We ate delicious food, heard Brent preach on the parables in a squeeky teenage girl voice thanks to a cold (which managed to be encouraging and entertaining at the same time), and had lots of fun just hanging out with our friends minus their cute, but distracting to serious conversation, kiddos.

 

Fast forward a few days and we headed south to warmer and sunnier climates in Texas for some R&R with just the two of us, our babymoon if you are into that kind of lingo.  We had pretty much no agenda other than getting massages and enjoying the sunshine, oh and seeing Spencer's brother play in a concert Friday night.  And no in case you are wondering I do not get massages all the time, it just seemed like an appropriate thing to do on a babymoon and well in Colorado I didn't have to buy lift tickets so it cancelled out ;).  Okay I'm done justifying my actions haha.

 

San Antonio was absolutely beautiful.  Other than the fact that our resort was under a renovation which included guys with chainsaws starting up right at 8 am right outside our window, it was really peaceful and relaxing.  We walked around the golf course path on the resort under huge old trees, ate delicious mexican breakfast tacos, worked out a little in the resort gym,  and then headed to the day spa for our massages.  This place was so relaxing it was ridiculous.  After the massage (complete with hot towels on my feet and a pillow with room for my prego belly) we had access to the facility for the whole day, which included saunas, hot tubs, steam rooms, giant showers, jars full of chocolate chips and craisins and biscotti, cucumber water, and an outdoor heated pool with chaises in the sun.  Yes please.   

 

 

And did I mention we were pretty much the only people there?  We laid out in the sun and read our books and felt completely spoiled.  Oh yeah so small back story, this is the resort I stayed at last year on valentine's day.  For a work conference.  By myself.  So we redeemed valentine's day in San Antonio this go around :).  We headed down to the riverwalk area for dinner.  Here's us taking a picture of ourselves.

 



 

Then this lady sitting on a bench by us offered to take a picture for us.  Zoom out - there you go, my prego belly at 28 weeks!  So far it hasn't gotten too huge and uncomfortable, but people are finally getting the guts to ask me if I'm pregnant or just going ahead and asking me when my due date is.  I guess the start of the third trimester is a legitimate time to actually look pregnant ;).

 

 



 



After walking around for awhile we managed to find the fresh mex place I ate at last vday (by myself, I know I'm weird, but I didn't want fast food when I could expense it!).  Other than the fact that I could only try the delicious margarita instead of getting one myself it was delicious!!  I mean how can baked cheese dip with chorizo be bad? :)  Oh also, we had the Mariachi band sing for us!

 

 

 

After stuffing our faces, we started walking back to our car and came across an outdoor ampitheater with an outdoor screen playing When Harry Met Sally which we both realized we had never seen.  So we sat in the breezy 70 degree weather and watched.  I couldn't help thinking it was one of the most peaceful days we've had in a long time.

Oh and how could I forget, we also had yummy coffee and pastries at a local, hipster coffee shop we read about in the hotel magazine.  Yep pretty much a perfect day.

The next day we went back to the hipster coffee shop, read for awhile (this trip it was the Girl Who Played With Fire) and then headed to the zoo!  Again the weather was AMAZING.  And the zoo was really well laid out and beautiful.  We saw hippos up close in a giant water tank (so ridiculously huge!!), we saw monkeys taunting eachother, we saw zebras and a wild dog that looked kind of disturbing.  On our third try we finally saw the lazy old lioness move from behind her rock hiding place to out in the sun where she promptly laid back down and went to sleep.  And we saw these weird giant anteaters!  So cool.  And it made me want to have a little kid (I know good thing right?).  We heard one little kid say, "mom, it's a good thing you have a phone because if that lion gets out you can call animal control."  We saw another little girl with one of those leash backpacks literally pulling her dad in the direction she wanted to go.  Just remember that when you decide to buy my kid a leash backpack ;). 

 

Wow I should write blog posts more often, or somehow break them up, this is ridiculosu!!  After the zoo it was off to Austin, and I think I will do the second half of the trip another night.  Spencer's been reading to me from the book his grandpa's friend wrote about WWII and I have no idea what's happening.  I better focus!  Plus I need to put in another load of laundry.  And maybe make some hot chocolate considering it is NOT 70 degrees and sunny here today, it's cold and rainy and dreary. And on that note, I'm out.

Mom Car?

Okay so a little while after we found out we were having a mini Hellman we started talking about whether or not we would need to get a different car.  My current car is only two doors and it's a manual.  Two strikes against it in the mom car category.  However it's awesome.  And I'd be lying if I said I was having an easy time imaging myself giving it up for a spacious SUV (not to mention a minivan, goodness the thought of that made me want to cry or at least run away to Europe for awhile where I could happily drive a small car in peace).  I think also that thinking about having an SUV made me feel like I was officially giving up my carefreeness (I know, not a word) and resigning myself to true adulthood. Maybe that only makes sense to me, but anyway I felt like I was constantly feeling like I was willingly giving away my freedom ever time I even thought about test driving an SUV.  Okay ridiculous back story done! 

 

 

So we slowly started test driving when we felt like it, and we spent some nights browsing the internet and of course I asked everyone I talked to what they thought I should get.  I got everything from a porsche cayenne (umm I'm looking for something that cost less than my house thank you very much) to a honda accord (okay these are fine but I kind of like cars that are fun to drive not just reliable, again not ready to be a grownup yet) to a dodge caravan with a BMW logo stuck on the front (thank you engineers I work with that do actually have a sense of humor).

In response to that we test drove none of those of course.  Warning: before you keep reading you're forewarned I might bash your favorite car.  I figure differing opinions are why Honda isn't the only car company in the world :).  We did test drive a jeep patriot which we pretty much hated.  I'm sorry but being able to reach 45 before hitting the end of the highway ramp is kind of important to me.  Next it was the grand cherokee, which the sales guy assured us would be more powerful.  Yes more powerful and also HUGE.  No thanks.  Pause for christmas vacation and some cold dark nights we didn't want to venture out on to test drive cars when we couldn't feel our fingers.  Then it was on to the VW dealership, which was really more by chance.  We'd been scouting around online and found this car that would be AMAZING to own.  The Golf R.  Yes the R stands for racing.  We went to get my car serviced and low and behold they had jsut gotten one on the lot that morning complete with red paint and four doors!  Fast forward a day or two to when we actually had time to go back to check it out - it was sweet.  A six speed manual that was ridiculously fast.  Also expensive, as expensive as some smaller SUV's Spencer had been looking at sneakily in his spare time while I freaked out about having a mom car.  So we told the sales guy we'd think about it and went on our way.  For the record he did say he thought a car seat would fit in the back, although he said we were the first people to ask about that feature!

So Spencer kept researching things online.  I kept having mini freakouts about being a soccer mom.  People at work kept telling me you are really going to want an SUV, you're not going to want to be bending down all the time, hitting your head to get baby Noah out of the back seat, plus you're not going to want to have no leg room for whoever gets stuck sitting in front of baby.  Goodness! Who know there were so many things to consider.  Enter the possibility of the BMW X3.  Sneaky hubby knows I love BMW's.  He also did his research and found their smaller SUV and found that it costs around the same as a new Golf R, with way more room for car seats and all the other stuff you apparently need to have with you at all times when you have a baby!

In a moment of weakness, okay more like a moment of needing a break from spreadsheet analysis at work, I thought okay I'll go online and see what the dealership in town has in stock in the way of X3's.  I found one that said it was a 2011 and suddenly was more intrigued by the thought of not having to pay the new car price tage.  Okay this is getting long winded!  Long story shortish, I emailed the dealership and a sales guy I had met before when my friend at work was buying a BMW remembered me and emailed me back lickety split saying the car had just come on the lot and had low mileage and we should come drive it!  So Saturday afternoon we headed over to check it out and go figure it was fully loaded, complete with a giant moon roof, turbo charged engine, paddle shifters, sport mode, back up camera, built in window shades in the back to keep the sun out of baby's (or grandma's) eyes and oh yeah heated seats in the front and back!!  And did I mention it was fast?  Like really fast? Put it in sport mode and pretty soon you are flying past everyone else on the highway before you even realize you are going 20 over, but wait!  It also projects your speed onto the front windshield so you don't have to even look down to know you are in danger of a speeding ticket, perfect!  But being the rule follower I am, plus the fact that it was still a big price tag in comparison to my little rabbit, we told the sales guy we needed to think on it for the weekend and take the chance that the three other people who had already test driven it that day wouldn't decide on it faster than us.  We talked about it.  Slept on it.  Talked about it some more.  I decided I could live with a super sporty, super fast BMW SUV.  Spencer convinced me we should get a nice car so we weren't always wishing we could drive his car everywhere.  Plus, it was like the best of both worlds combined, letting me still be carefree while also having room for a baby and a pack n play and a stroller and a baby bag and umm a case of beer haha.

Ta da!!! My new mom car.  I love it.

 

I will love it even more when I've figured out how to park it without being completely paranoid about how big it is.

Spencer is a little jealous that my car is now nicer than his.  We now have the ying and yang of BMW's as David affectionately calls our black and white vehicles.  I feel a bit like a tool, but as a coworker said, a fast, stylish tool.  Mission accomplished ;).
   

Just A Few Happenings

Life is happening around here, nothing too exciting.  Okay well that's a lie we actually just bought a new (used) car tonight!! However it is getting outfitted with new tires, so I didn't get to drive it away quite yet.  Looks like I get a few more days of blissful denial with my lovely VW 2 door rabbit and then it's on to four door SUV's, car seats, and parenthood.  Sheesh that sounds so overwhelming.  I think I will acclerate in third gear and drive like a maniac for the next couple of days and maybe add in a few good peel outs just for fun.  Sorry, you're just going to have to be in suspense about what we purchased till I actually have it and can take pretty pictures of it.  All I'll say is it has a giant moonroof and a turbocharger, so I was sold :).

Okay so up through today's purchase life had been happening as usual.  We've had a little bit of the January blues, like the wow I have to be a grownup and go to work everyday even when work is stressful and tiring and makes me want to just watch Top Gear all night long, kind of blues.  Nothing too extreme, just not our most cheery days.  Libby was reminding me it is winter after all and things are just kind of slow and dreary and not too worry too much about the funk.  I think I'll take that advice! 

I've decided this may be my guilty pleasure during pregnancy:

A delicious latte and a cookie at the same time.  Normally I would only do one or the other, or do black coffee and a cookie to avoid having a million calorie snack in the afternoon when I really just need a stretch break from my computer, but for some reason lately my willpower has been a little lower ;).  Sometimes it's just a cookie and a latte kind of day.  So far I haven't had any weird cravings, so for now this will have to suffice!

Spencer's been taking good care of me during this whole pregnancy thing.  It really hasn't been too bad yet, but some days vacuuming the whole house and cleaning the bathroom on top of laundry sounds so overwhelming, and then he'll offer to scrub the toilet and sweep half the rooms for dog hair and it doesn't seem quite so bad anymore.  He also made me this awesome dinner one night for date night after my midwife office called to tell me I had missed my appointment because both Spencer and I had written it down for the following week.  I drove across town in rush hour traffic while he whipped up this deliciousness!! I think I should let him cook more often ;).

Steak and garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus and peanut thai chicken all in one meal?!  Not too mention lovely virgin lemon drop martinis!  Who knew ginger beer and fresh squeezed lemon juice could taste so close to the real thing?  Without, of course, causing any harm to little Noah other than a sugar rush ;).

Okay here's my 25 week shot.  Maybe someday I will have an actual bump - not that I am wishing to be huge any time soon!!!

Pictures on the new mom ride to come shortly . . .

Nothing Like . . .

. . . a cold, rainy - make that sleety - day to make you want to clean house and check things off the to do list.  I got a jump start last night while Spencer went to OKC to see his brother play in a band (they guy from the flaming lips came to check them out, maybe they'll be famous one day!!).  I decided as much as I wish I were that cool, I can't do concerts that start at 11 pm in a city two hours away.  It doesn't quite work out if you want to be in bed by 10 pm :).  So last night I did a bunch of loads of laundry, ate half a delicious pizza, kept Blitzy from eating the other half of my delicious pizza, cleaned up some around the house, watched a little TV and then started my baby registry!!  I'd been putting it off for awhile just because I was so overwhelmed by the thought of adding that much stuff to our house, but I just decided to start with what I knew I wanted and go from there.  So I started with cloth diapers and a moby wrap and after that, thanks to Amazon's nice little top things for baby prompter it really wasn't too bad.  I'm sure I'll go back and add things as I think of them, but so far I'm pretty happy with everything I found.  For the record, no I did not research everything or really even most things.  I picked colors I liked and things people had recommended and things that looked compact (I mean since I am going to have to take some of it to Europe with me haha).

Then this morning it was off to goodwill with a pile of clothes from our closets plus a run to get a bunch of new hangers for the new closets Spencer is almost done building!!  He installed the doors today, now all we have left is a bunch of painting for me and Spencer is going to put in shelves so the space is more usable.  Oh and I "need" to get some baskets to make the closet look cool - I mean better organize my scarves and purses and belts :).

Once we were home, it was a bunch of bills and paperwork organizing while watching more Top Gear (our new favorite thing) plus making cookies and folding laundry and working on the registry more and booking hotels for our babymoon!!  I'm pumped about it.  We're hitting up San Antonio and Austin in mid February for our final trip before little Noah gets here.  Last February I stayed at this awesome resort for a work thing that happened to be on Valentine's Day, so this year we're going back and I'm taking Spencer along :).  Can't wait.  Hopefully I won't be too uncomfortable yet. 

Let's see what else (in case you aren't bored of reading my to do list yet haha).  I also had to make sure my dog didn't jump the fence and run away again, like she did twice last night while I was home alone.  Not cool.  Especially not cool when the second time was in the dark and I didn't think I was going to be able to find her without sneaking around in people's yards.  Thankfully she hadn't gone to far. 

Oh yeah and I talked to Alisha!!!  And burned my anthropolgie candle I got for Christmas.  And drank yummy coffee.  I'd call that a pretty good productive day.  Now it's time for a movie and hot chocolate.

One more thing.  Random thing I learned today in a free Parenting magazine I got.  Apparently the raunchy book Shades of Grey caused a bunch of babies to be born 9 months later.  Go figure.  People are odd.  And people who decide to write an article on things like this are odder.

Still Trying to Decide

So I'm still thinking about what I want my 2013 resolutions to be.  This whole baby in May thing is making it a little more confusing to think through what my year might be like and what might be resolutions I could even reasonably try to accomplish.  I'm trying not to set too lofty of goals since I have no idea what being a parent will be like, other than I'm expecting less sleep and more diapers and a totally thrown off daily routine.  Acknowledging it will be crazy is part of the process right?  I'm thinking I need a resolution that's something like go with the flow.  Or be okay with a shorter to do list, or maybe no to do list for the day.   But, those are hard to measure and I like concrete things.  So I'm also thinking things like learn to use bobby pins, try cloth diapering, take my 6 month old to Europe for Thanksgiving.  Okay that one might be a little crazy, but I've been reading about it and "all" the websites say that's a good time to go.  They sleep through the night but they can't crawl off yet :).  I'll keep you posted on what I come with after I do a little more thinking and a little more writing in my journal and probably passing it by Spencer to see if he thinks they are crazy goals to have in our first year as parents, well at least parents of an infant that isn't residing inside me!

In the meantime, here's some proof of the lovely frivolity we had over Christmas break.  Lots of good food, lots of fun talking to family, hearing about life, eating more, playing games, watching British comedy, and did I mention eating?  Oh yeah and watching the hobbit and frequenting coffee shops and dreading having to start a baby registry at some time in the near future.  Sigh.  I guess I should add that to my list of things to do.  Why do babies need so much stuff?!! I'm the only one who feels slightly sick when I think about adding all that stuff to my life?  Okay maybe it's just me that doesn't find it all adorable and awesome haha.   

Spencer being crazy.

His dad being crazy.  Hmm I wonder where he gets it?

 And our new activity for the break: geo caching!!  I thought there was no way we were actually going to find a little film canister somewhere on the railroad tracks near the Katy Trail, but lo and behold there it was!  Under one of the old railroad ties and filled with a list of names of all the other crazies who had found it compliments of their gps systems on their iphones.  Yes we are those yuppies with five dollar lattes trying to find little treasures buried somewhere random.  And we enjoyed ever minute of it.  Well at least till we had to go to the bathroom and couldn't feel our fingers anymore.

Okay we're off to visit some new friends who have a 3 month old german shepherd puppy.  This is going to be bad.  Spencer has to keep reminding me, no puppies, we're having a baby!!  It will be so much better.  Or so they say ;).

Finally!!!

It's Christmas break!!

I feel like I've been looking forward to this for a long time, okay at least for the last two weeks.  It's been crazy here in t-town this month, and by that I mean we are really blessed with community here - a community that likes to party!  First we had my work party at the convention center downtown, complete with the awkwardness that comes from being one of the only people not drinking.  I'm sorry but my personal bubble hadn't shrink that night, even if everyone else wanted to be right in my face telling me congratulations haha.  Then we had small group get togethers, dinners with work friends, dinners with TU friends, dirty santas in the office complete with a marshmellow launcher gun, an awkward neighborhood punch and cookie party with all the old folks fighting about the bilaws of our association (and they wonder why no young people come to the meetings?!!), a guy's night of drinking beer to celebrate all the babies being born in the spring (the count is up to five I think within our close group of friends at church!!!), a girl's wine night to just celebrate wine and friends (don't worry the hostess was kind enough to make delicious prego drinks for all of us non wine partakers), and that doesn't even the include the night we had three parties and decided to skip them all to go on a date, eat steak and burgers (no I didn't eat both!!) and finally watch Skyfall, which by the way was wonderful.

It's been a fun couple of weeks.  And today . . . well we are cleaning!  And nesting haha.  Okay so apparently we both have the urge to get rid of all the stuff we have lying around the house that we don't need.  Maybe it's being spurred on by baby coming or maybe by the fact that Spencer is building new closets for us in the room we'll be moving into so we can convert our room to the nursery (ahhh so weird), but either way it's been satisfying.  We've spent this morning cleaning out our current closets and making giant piles for good will, the trash, and then a pile of, man I hope we know someone who is this size because these things are barely worn or still have tags on them!  Amazing what you find when you dig through the backs of your drawers. 

Also I've been going through my clothes and putting away what I probably won't be able to wear until little munchkin gets here.  Yep the fun has started :).  Okay I thought it was going to just feel like putting on 10 pounds, but this is weird!  It's like someone is inflating a balloon inside me and my insides have to stretch to accomodate the changes, such an odd feeling!  In other baby news, in case you haven't heard, it's a BOY.  And we are both relieved haha.  I don't think either of us was prepared to have a girly girl complete with bows and tutus and barbies.  Don't get me wrong I think they are adorable, but we both are really excited about a little man in our house.  Plus I mean all the nursery stuff I looked at that I liked was blue, so this will just make everything easier.  And I much prefer crazy loudness to drama.  I know, famous last words :).

Okay I'm off to prenatal yoga.  No time like the present to acknowledge the fact that I am in fact having a baby and at some point running and rock and roll yoga complete with lunges and planks is probably not going to be feasible.  I'm going to keep trying though!  Until I feel completely miserable or I just can't do any poses due to my giant belly haha.

Hope you are all enjoying a slower pace of things for a few days at least.  Merry Christmas!