16 Weeks!

I haven't updated anything on the pregnancy lately so I feel like now would be a good time. Things are going really well now. I am officially out of my first trimester and all the things that people have told me have been true so far (the sleepiness and nausea have subsided for the most part). I did have one out of place throwing up incident since bidding farewell to trimester 1, but I will spare the gory details. Overall, I have been very lucky. My pregnancy hasn't been too terribly difficult. Mood swings have been in check (generally speaking...), cravings have been mild, no scares so far, etc. The baby seems to be doing well. The heartbeat is strong, but I am still waiting to feel it move. I have been told it feels like a flutter so I am paying very close attention because I don't want to miss it. There have been some things that have taken a little getting used to such as people feeling like they can touch my belly as if I were Buddha (so I am not used to this one yet), not being able to sleep on my stomach, doubling the amount of times I go pee on an average day, unusual irritability in places such as the grocery store (I swear I have almost rammed my cart into a couple of old ladies ankles. Don't worry. I contained myself), and, oh, yes...the rubber band...I feel like I am actually starting to look pregnant now and not just like I am getting fat which is a good thing. This is not such a great picture but whatever...

My students have been varied in their reactions. They ask a lot of questions. Some of them even pretend to cry during class to "prepare" me. Aren't they sweet? Sadly, I still do not know the sex of our little bean, however, I am scheduled to find out May 14th! (Hopefully the little thing wont play an evil trick on its mother and cross its legs or anything). I don't think I have ever been more impatient for something to come. So today, I decided to take my chances with some less conventional methods to see if I could find some answers. One of the teacher's on campus has gotten a reputation for determining the sex of the baby by hanging a sewing needle on thread over your hand. She has done this for several teachers on campus and so far has been right for all of them! Naturally, I seeked out her gift. According to the needle I will be having a girl, and then 2 boys (was not prepared for that one!). I understand this seems completely ridiculous, but before she checked me she checked the other teacher in my department who is also pregnant (and due on the same date!). She already has 2 kids and this test will tell you the sex of all of your kids so she did her little thing showed Heidi's first kid was a boy (right so far!). Then she did it again and it showed that her second kid was a girl (2 for 2). I couldn't believe it! Maybe there is something to this voodoo magic after all? As reliable as the needle has been I will be confirming its findings anyway : )
Matt and I have started the process of clearing out the guest room in order to make it a baby's room. The closet is officially emptied, but the room is pretty much in shambles. My sister was nice enough to give us my nephews old crib. Austin was even nice enough to leave some old milk spills on it for us!Once we find out what the baby is I plan to sand it and paint it white for a girl or stain it dark brown if it is a boy (summer project #1). I am still not 100% sure on what I want to do for either sex as far as the room goes, but that's OK because I still have a lot of time (right?!).

A Little Problem...

Anyone who knows us knows just how much we adore Katie. Though undeniably neurotic, she is the perfect loyal companion, and she provides us with hours of entertainment. Since moving in with her I have come to notice a compulsive problem that she has. It's called, leaving toys all around the house. At first, I found this to be endearing, but after 2 years, my patience has been worn thin. Katie's toys are her most prized possession. We even gave her her very own little toy box to contain them all, even though 99.9% of the time they are not even in here anyway... So one night, I got fed up and decided to count how many toys she had spread out throughout the ENTIRE house. I counted 12!!! That's right 12 toys!!!
WHY? I just don't get it! The second we go and put them away she will go over to her toybox, pull out all of the toys until she finds the "right" one. I am not sure what constitutes her toy selection at any given moment, but it is a very careful process. It is almost as if she cannot relax until she has a certain amount of toys out. It is driving me crazy! There are 3 in the room that I am in right now...and where is Katie? In the family room. She is not even playing with them. This picture is priceless! After rounding up her toys I sat in the family room to make sure she wasn't going to go and get them back out. Look at the pain that is on her face! Don't feel too bad. Not 2 minutes after leaving the room she pulled them right back out. I guess she is just preparing us for having children right?

Anniversary!

Matt and I have officially made it to our 2 year anniversary (April 13th). In keeping with tradition, we went to Claim Jumpers for dinner (one of our favorite restaurants that is saved only for special occasions). As always, it was delicious! Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture because I have a husband who is not so crazy about me taking pictures everywhere we go. Oh well...Presents were kept low key I got Matt this little number:

And Matt got me these hot items: To an average Joe this may seem weird, but for a teacher this is as good as any jewelry (OK, so maybe not, but it was still a sweet idea because I have a tendency of stopping in the school supply aisle and never actually buying anything)

This was gift #2 (Matt never can stay within the budget on presents). Purchasing this was a big step for Matt considering his all consuming hate for musicals. He asked me to keep it separate from his movies. Apparently the "girly" singing is going to rub off on his more"manly" movie selection.

It has been a fun 2 years! Everyone told us the the beginning is the hardest part. If that's true, the rest should be a walk in the park! Even after 2 years (plus another 6 of dating), I still find myself wanting to be with Matt all the time. We just have fun when we are together which makes for a very enjoyable marriage. Here's to many more years of married bliss ;)

Suns Game 2009

Matt and I have made a point to attend at least 1 Suns game per season. This year was looking bleak, but lucky for us my parents had 2 tickets that they did not plan on using. Naturally, we took advantage of the free tickets. I was a little concerned because the game didn't start until 7:00 which meant that I wouldn't get home until 11:00 or so on a school night. Even so, it was worth it. We played Houston Rockets in a very exciting game that ended in a win for the Suns! At this time there was still the possibility that the Suns could make it into the playoffs. (As you may know, this never ended up happening). To be completely honest, I didn't really want them to make it this year. That means that we would have ended up in the 8th seat and I REALLY did not want to potentially get eliminated by the Lakers (my LEAST favorite sports team EVER!!). Though it was a less than stellar season, I had a lot of fun watching these guys find their fast paced game again. To me, that made it all worth it. I also had a blast watching Lou Amundson who may be my new favorite Suns player (after Barbosa of course).
Not that I am a big fan or anything, but the guy in the orange shirt is Muhammad Ali. I was very disappointed when they got up and left during the 3rd quarter. You have court side seats and you wont even be using them? Ugh...

Spring Break!

I realize that spring break was a long time ago, but I have been negligent with blogging lately and I have decided to get caught up tonight (This is code for I don't want to lesson plan for my 2nd hour tomorrow). I had a nice week off. I was able to get a lot of house chores done as well as some relaxation. I had big plans for sleeping in and taking naps everyday, but that never happened :( We did have some fun little visitors though. One of my cousins from MD had a school project where she had to send Flat Stanley to visit. I guess they read a story in class where Stanley got flattened and sent through the mail so the class was sending him out as well to see how many places he could travel. Cute right? Well Stanley had a blast enjoying the beautiful spring weather. On his last day visiting I recruited Austin to provide some assistance with taking Flat Stanley to the park. I am pretty sure they had a good time.

On a side note...this was the first time that I had seen Austin since finding out I was pregnant. He was too funny! He had the craziest questions! Everywhere we went he asked if the baby was coming with me. I told him that the baby was pretty much going to go everywhere with me for the next couple of months. My favorite question was:
"How is the baby going to come out? Is it going to come out of your mouth?"
My answer: "Yes"
Apparently he was not satisfied with this explanation so he considered other alternatives:
"Is your stomach going to explode and the baby will come out?"
This time I just looked at Austin with wide eyes and said..."I'm scared." Feeling bad, he reassured me that my stomach wouldn't actually explode...Little does he know.
At one point throughout the day he put his blanket in his stomach to look like mine (thanks bud!)

Later that same day we decided to take Katie to the dog park. This was technically her 2nd time since we had taken her the Sunday before, but we thought Austin would have fun with the dogs. Just for the record, Katie LOVED it. Unfortunately, this experience definitely showed us what an only dog Katie is. She is pretty much a total loner. She just runs around growling at the other dogs as they pass. She gets especially irritated when they chase her around while sniffing her butt! Who can blame her though right? She really likes just walking around in the water. I don't think she realizes that she can swim...Scoping out the scene. She probably growled at that dog later. Enjoying the cold water. Though she did end up sitting in it she never attempted the full swim...one day...Austin had to have his fun too...He was very proud that he climbed this all by himself (hence the thumbs up)!
This was Katie on the way home...POOPED!! We pretty much didn't hear from her for the rest of the night. Growling at 72 other dogs sure takes it out of you!

MORP...2009???

For those who don't know, Morp is a high school dance where girl asks guy. In other words, it is prom backwards. Way back when, in 2001, I asked a guy named Matt Smith. He was not my boyfriend at the time, but I had a pretty big crush on him. Because I was too shy to do it alone I asked my friend Meghan if she would ask our friend Ben as well so it would seem like a group thing. Meghan and I got together and wrote a catchy little poem which was enhanced by our use of fake drums and fake cigarettes if my memory serves me correctly. I mean really who could say no that? They boys response (equally clever) was a video story narrated by Ben with clips of movies, and video games. For example, when they told the part about us driving to morp they used a clip from some racing video game. If I can ever track it down I would love to post the video we made to ask them as well as the video they used to respond. Both were pretty genius. The theme for Morp 2001 was "Morp Tour," a play on words for the very famous warped tour. The day began with a "water" balloon fight at Freestone park though I will say some of the water balloons were not filled with water. Rather they were filled with milk, coke, Jell-o, Coffee...After getting cleaned up the girls and I treated the boys to some fine dining at Wendy's, but then we had to go home and get ready. Meghan and I ran out and bought Rock Star tee shirts and "bedazzled" them....though at the time we didn't have a bedazzler so we just glued each jewel on by hand. The look was completed with crimped hair and white trash make-up. We were ready to "rock and roll." The boys took a different spin on the idea. They decided to dress up like a very popular rock band at the time (Blink 182). The costumes were to perfection. Ben actually drew Travis' tattoo's on his arms! To make a long story short we had the BEST time! Matt debuted some of the best dance moves I had ever seen, Ben showed off his impressive break dancing skills. We even started a disco line! This may be one of my all time favorite high school memories.
Fast forward 8 years later...

As a teacher, part of our responsibilities are to chaperon one after school event. This year my assignment was morp. I wont lie, I was not too excited about this assignment because I had to stay up until 11 and being pregnant and all this is not easy for me! (Don't worry I made up for it on Sunday with 2 naps!). So, here I am getting ready for morp all over again. As I am doing this I think to myself wouldn't it be so funny if I invited Ben? Wouldn't you know it, he agreed! This year it was a Skateland and the theme was "Neon nights." Unfortunately, none of us had any neon :) Here we are again...at Morp...as chaperons. What a stark contrast!Matt decided to get in on the "neon" fun! Doesn't he look like he is having the best time?
While Morp 2009 was no where near as fun as Morp 2001 it was cool to see the kids having fun just like we did back in high school...Ok, maybe not exactly like we did. I bet they didn't have a water balloon fight before hand...

The longest 10 days...

I have known now for 10 days that I am pregnant. Really, it feels like I have known for about 3 months. This post is going to start last Friday and just for the record I do not plan on sharing every little pregnant detail. This is all just new to me and I am excited. So, back to my story, I started the day not feeling so hot and as the day progressed so did my cold (or whatever it was). On the drive home from work I could barely keep my eyes open, but we stopped at Walgreen's to get some medicine. I literally could not breathe and it was making me miserable. We called the doctor to see what I was allowed to take went in and bought my drugs. It was on Friday that I had my first ridiculous crying spell. I REALLY did not want to be sick! This weekend may possibly have been one of the worst ever. I spent the entire weekend laying around the house because that was pretty much all I had the energy to do. I was incredibly nauseous which wasn't helping matters either. On Sunday I hit rock bottom. It was on Sunday I had my second ridiculous crying spell. Matt wanted to shampoo the carpets, but being the cranky, nauseous person that I was I told him that I did not feel like listening to the vacuum for the next hour. (I know what you must be thinking, how stupid right? I have a husband who WANTS to do house chores and I am complaining about listening to him when all I have to do is lay there). I was so upset because I knew how unreasonable I was being, but I couldn't help it. From the stress of all this and feeling worse than ever I started crying. Eventually, I threw up. I haven't done this since I was a child and let me just say that it is every bit as bad as I remembered it. Fortunately, it made me feel much better to just get it out of my system. I haven't thrown up since which I am very thankful for.

Monday rolls around and I have my first "pregnant" doctor's appointment. Thankfully I was able to get some medicine so I could get rid of this cold that had now moved into my chest. I was really hoping to get a due date but we were not so lucky. All she was able to tell me was that I was anywhere from 5 to 13 weeks so she requested an ultrasound so that we could narrow it down. (The 2 month gap just wasn't working). She also dropped the blood work bomb on me again. Yes, I get to do it all over again!! (And, just for the record, I am aware that more is on the horizon. Please refrain from reminding me over and over!) As the week went by I began to feel much better. Now that my body wasn't trying to fight off a cold and grow a fetus my energy level and nausea had improved significantly.

The ultrasound was scheduled for Friday and we were very excited. I knew we wouldn't be able to see much, but it would still be cool to see the little thing. Matt and I decided that if I was 8 weeks that we could officially tell people. It turns out that I am 8 weeks and 2 days and my due date is October 13th which happens to be during fall break! The ultrasound was really neat. Even though it just looked like a little blob it was the cutest little blob I have ever made! I am sure I am biased, but seriously look how cute it is:
The little nubs below its head are apparently its arms :) My appetite is still weak, but overall I can't complain. I am almost starting to feel normal again. I am just hoping that I stay like this.

After the ultrasound we went to tell Matt's family (aunts, uncles, grandpa) and we called some of my family from MD. Everyone is really excited. While I realize it may not be the smartest idea to tell everyone this early on Matt pretty much leaves me no option as he will tell anyone who will listen. So here it is...Let the games begin!