Dear Baby,

I've been out of denial for quite some time now, especially since you've decided to show yourself a little bit more as you start to grow. For awhile, you were in a bitter battle with my beer gut/frontal muffin top, so it was kind of hard to figure out whether I was pregnant or just bloated with a drinking problem. Last week was YOUR week. You really popped out and started to develop quite the personality.

It was our first solo trip together, probably the easiest one we'll ever take. We went to Atlanta to work at the Thirty-One National Conference. My co-workers were all very concerned about how this would affect me, but luckily I was mostly unaffected. As long as I kept you fed and hydrated, you were just fine, choosing to stay quiet all day. The mornings were your time. Right before I got out of bed, you'd throw yourself a little party in there - bopping around, kicking and punching. Its now much more distinguishable than before, no mistaking what's happening in there!

You and I must be jiving really well because I wasn't ever sore or swollen as I worked some longer-than-normal hours with less than normal sleep. Your favorite food last week was a peach scone from Starbucks. You had a party about 1/2 way through my first one!

When I got home, your dad noticed the difference in your size. As I was coming down the escalator to see him, his eyes got a little wider and when he hugged me, he took a step back and looked at my belly and said..."Babbbbyyyyyy" in his funny voice. The week away made the "pop" a little more dramatic for him, especially since I had on a tighter shirt that accentuated the bump.

As I'm sitting here now, you're kicking me a little. It might be the Hershey Bar that I ate a little while ago, or maybe you know that I'm thinking about you. OR maybe its the 64 oz of water that I've already consumed today and you're feeling happy and hydrated. Either way, was we continue to prepare for your arrival, I'm both scared and excited. The planner in me is trying to get the "must do's" done so that we can really enjoy our time together when you arrive. That also includes work...which is becoming increasingly hard to focus on.

This week's agenda:  Finishing up the nursery decor, Thank-you notes from our Pittsburgh shower and more babysitter interviews. You're sure keeping us busy.

XOXO,
Momma

Nesting...Lunacy...same difference

I've heard that nesting is another symptom of pregnancy, but I'm convinced that nesting falls under the same category as lunacy. Maybe lunacy is the blanket term and then there are sub-bullets underneath to describe how your hormone-fueled body deals with each one of the symptoms? Its similar to an out of body experience, or so I think, because I can hear the craziness coming out of my mouth and see the look on Nick's face when I have yet another thought, but I'm powerless to stop any of it from happening.

Case in point. Our garage.

What started out as an innocent walk one evening with Chino, ended up to be a two week process involving multiple trips to Goodwill, mountains of trash and a new workbench. The conversation went something like this:

L:  "We NEED to clean out the garage because there is no way that I'm going to be able to get my car in there, and get a car seat out of the back, without hitting the other car. If we had things rearranged, we could move both cars over, to make more room in the middle."
N: "Umm ok. But if you can't get your car in the garage, you can always just use the driveway."
L: "Let's pretend that my rational mind already thought of that and that it didn't just dawn on me now that the garage wasn't my only option."
N: "Uh huh."

Fast forward to the following Saturday when the garage purge started. Nick began by categorizing things and sorting through piles of garbage that we had literally been storing in our garage for over a year. He sat me down in a lawn chair and asked me to sort things into several categories; keep, shred; giveaway, trash. My hormones didn't fail me as I ruthlessly began throwing things out. Nick was thrilled, because some of these same things had been points of contention the last time we had attempted this project (hence the trash storage).

Fast forward to this past Sunday when we stepped back to see how much we had accomplished. It was pretty impressive. Not only can two cars fit in the garage comfortably, the back door opens wide without hitting the other one (I checked). The space is arranged in a logical fashion - in sections that make sense, and there's not a pile or box of trash in sight. By the end of it, Nick was really into it, and glad that the crazy woman made the suggestion to get things started. Perhaps nesting is contagious?

Lunacy is a symptom

Now that everyone knows why I'm carrying around a hodgepodge of various foods and snacks at all times, chugging water and not drinking, I can begin to get into the symptoms of pregnancy. Don't think I'm going to talk about being bloated or about my boobs that are both "ridiculous and out of control", because I'm not. I'm going to talk about my fixation with making sure that the curtains, valance and sheers are hung up to the exact specifications of the picture in my head.

It all started innocently enough with a trip to JC Penney, where my sister found curtains to match the bedding and that wouldn't distract from the orange walls and green chair. Once the curtains were secured, it was time to find the hardware from which they'll hang. This posed a new problem because our house is somewhat lame in that the window frame of the nursery is only 3" from the wall. That leaves me no room to add any of the zillions of cute curtain rods with equally cute embellishments to the ends. Armed with a scale drawing of the nursery, I selected a rod with balls (TWSS) that would be appropriate for the space, proudly showing it off to Nick. He was impressed that I selected the curtain rod with careful consideration and with the assistance of a tape measure.

Fast forward several weeks later. Its the week that the nursery is getting painted, so we decided to hang the curtains, so all holes would be drilled in the wall, pre-paint, hence avoiding any flip-outs by yours truly, when Nick uttered the word oops after drilling a hole in the wall. Monday night, my poor husband headed upstairs for what he thought would be a routine installation, only to be confronted with a new window treatment (a valance) and a crazy wife who couldn't help by articulating the vision in her head. After several rounds of "oops" and re-do's, and "oh shit's", and a broken curtain rod, we called it an evening and decided that my balls were too big (TWSS - yes I did) for the window frame.

If you're keeping score:  Valance: 1, Linda&Nick: 0

Tuesday evening, I triumphantly arrived home with a new curtain rod, with smaller balls, which I thought would fit better into the stupidly designed space. I also arrived home full from a dinner with a friend and with a bad case of heartburn. I'm only mentioning this because it added to an already cranky situation. Nick did his thing with the drill and we stepped back and looked at it...and it looked weird. Nothing like the picture on the back of the package (and the perfect installation that I have in my head). When I wasn't showing any hint of being satisfied, he called his mom and received quite the tutorial on double curtain rods, tension rods and cafe rods as they relate to the configuration that I was hoping would work. That conversation pushed him over the edge and he declared that we were done for the night.

I pouted and went downstairs to research new ways to install everything, desperately looking for a magic set of hardware to achieve my look, but with no luck. After being coaxed into stopping for the night and going to bed, I had a eureka about how what we had could maybe work if we hung things up slightly different than what they were supposed to be. I think I went to bed mumbling about valances, Nick tried to calm me down and coax me to sleep. This morning, it was the first thing I thought of when I got up, and I think I have the perfect solution....in my head. We'll see what happens when we get home and try to make it work. If not, I've been promised a shopping trip to find the perfect solution - for both of us - which will stop the temporary insanity.

Big changes ahead

Last week, my friend Marci called me out on not posting anything about the big changes that are happening in our life and in Chino's life. It wasn't ready to be social media public yet, but as of last Thursday, its officially out there. That's right. It. It is a big change that Nick and I are still getting used to. It is going to rock our world. It is going to make Chino a big brother. It is making us parents this year. That's right. Parents. Our furbaby is going to have a two legged big brother or sister. I'm not sure that he's grasped the enormity of the situation, I know that I haven't.

What I do know is that we are so blessed that we have been given this gift of fear and uncertainty and love. We are holding hands and ready for our adventure into parenthood, which will consist of trips to Babies R Us, projectile vomiting, breast pumps, elastic pants, onesies and lots of love and laughter. Its hard to say that we're actually ready, but I know that we're as ready as we'll ever be. I can't imagine our 20-something selves handling this as remotely well as our 30-something selves are doing (so far, anyway), and I'm so grateful that we got to spend time together "growing up" and making memories before we decided embark on the adventures of parenthood.