oh em gee

I am so sleepy! Guess the third trimester sleepiness is kicking in... I was hoping to have left that behind in the first trimester but apparently I'm not so lucky. Steve and my grandfather have been working hard all day putting up the chair rail and shadow boxes in the nursery. It looks amazing. Funny how such small details change a space entirely (I learned that from HGTV, but it's fun to see it in person). What a handy husband I have!

I made myself useful by occasionally using the level and the studfinder... but eventually gave up and cleaned the house instead. I was far more useful picking up meatball marinaras from Subway and baking cookies. Since I've had my Kitchenaid I've been annoyed by the fact that I only had the wire wisk attachment to mix dough... all along I could have sworn it came with the flat beater attachment. I've had that thing for two years and only today did it magically appear in one of the kitchen drawers... but it sure made baking cookies a whole lot easier.

The dogs didn't contribute at all today. Luke licked up a lot of sawdust (followed by a lot of hacking and coughing) and ran out of the nursery every time they started up the saw. Lila licked a lot of toes and just sat around looking cute since she was just groomed yesterday. Then they slept... all day long. I'm pretty jealous. Stinkers.

junebug.

My boss was in Hershey, PA last week for vacation (what you would do there for an entire week, I’ll never know) and brought back pretty much every size and type of candy bar that Hershey has ever manufactured… I’ve already stashed a Hershey bar with almonds at my desk. On my last pass, I swiped a Nutrageous. Hopefully the candy buffet will be gone by the next time I go near her office… thank goodness I went for my glucose test a week early!

I got to spend an afternoon with Ashley and Kara on Saturday – sitting outside of the Starbucks in Clifton reminded me why I need to get out of northern Virginia. I don’t think I’ve seen so many people from high school since graduation. Not fun people, either. They fell into one of two categories – those you completely avoid eye contact with so you can avoid any interaction at all or those you are forced to have awkward “wow, it’s been soooo long” conversations with. How uncomfortable. Makes me question whether or not we'll actually ever go to a high school reunion. Other than that, I had a great day with them and a great time with Morgan earlier in the day… and yesterday, Steve and I finally went to Home Depot and bought all of the wood for the chair rail and shadow boxes in the nursery. Who knew wood could cost so much? I was naïve prior to this home improvement trip. I just can’t wait for Ryan’s nursery to start taking shape – right now it’s just a halfway painted room with two dog cages in the middle.

I cannot believe it’s almost July. I’m looking forward to it because it’s going to be a great month – I start my new job… we’re going back down to the beach in NC for a few days… we’ll be in Florida for an entire week… we get to see Ryan in 3d (and 4d!) at our next ultrasound… but I have a feeling that with being so busy, it will be August before we know it. The baby will be here before we know it. Speaking of babies, my friend Jenny had her little boy Logan on July 18th! Congratulations, girl. :) Babies everywhere!

P.S. Next weekend I’ll officially be in my third trimester!

P.P.S. Looks like sending your comments several times works!

husband-less for the day!

Well, I am without the husband for the entire day today! Plan of attack: slept in (Steve wakes up at the butt crack of dawn on the weekends), make pancakes (the boy hates pancakes, how strange is that), shower, manicure/pedicure with Morgan, lunch with Smashley... then perhaps a little shopping (if I really want to stick to the whole theme of doing everything I possibly can that Steve doesn't enjoy, I should make it baby clothes shopping).

I had to go for my glucose tolerance test yesterday, which checks for signs of gestational diabetes. You basically have to drink a water bottle-sized amount of orange liquid and sit for an hour until they take your blood. Gross. If I fail, I have to go back for the three hour test. I had better pass.

P.S. I know my blog is screwy and rarely posts comments... but I can't seem to fix it. So if you're posting comments (sorry, Lauren, Taryn and Bails!) and they never show up, I promise I didn't reject your comment. Try try again!

happy father's day...

...to my dad, your dad, dads-to-be! Steve spent some of Father’s Day helping his dad work on his car… we also went out to breakfast with his family. I got to talk to my dad this morning (all the way in Kuwait!) to wish him a happy Father’s Day, as well. I'm not sure if they celebrate Father's Day in the Middle East - he couldn't say for sure but he had forgotten it was today so it must not be all over the place like it is here. There are Father's Day sales everywhere! This is also the last year Steve will ever have where he’s only celebrating his own father… next year we’ll be celebrating him, too!

The baby is growing like crazy and I'm six months pregnant now. It was pretty scary when we realized she would be here in three short months. We haven't even ordered her bedroom furniture yet! Need to get on that. The baby is "sporting a fresh pink glow, thanks to tiny new capillaries … She’s the size of an eggplant! Let your spouse put an ear to your belly -- he might be able to pick up baby's heartbeat (no stethoscope required). Baby's also soaking up your antibodies, getting the immune system ready for life outside the womb. Eyes are forming, and baby will soon perfect the blink -- perfect for batting those freshly grown lashes." Mmmm, I do love eggplant! Especially when it’s tempura-style at a Japanese restaurant or grilled in my pasta. Ryan is all over my belly now – even though she prefers my right side. If I lay down she goes all over the place from left to right and sometimes just underneath my bellybutton. If I push in around my belly button I can actually FEEL her underneath my fingertips moving around… it’s pretty crazy. I haven’t taken a new belly photo since I was about 18-20 weeks so once I stop peeling (gross) I’ll put one up here because I'm so much bigger than I was.

P.S. Not sure if I mentioned that I had put in for a promotion at work, but I did. And I got it. I am so excited to be on a new team that I can’t even explain it. It makes my summer. My last few months of pregnancy will be a little less stressful on my new team and I get the promotion increase and my annual raise just in time for my maternity leave. Score! :)

ten years...

Ten years ago the date was June 12, 1998. I was fifteen years old, hanging out at my friend Peter’s house, in love with a boy who was so shy that all we had shared up until this day was a number of extremely awkward moments. For some reason, that night was different. We talked for hours and by the end of the night, everything I had hoped for from the moment I laid eyes on him had happened – he asked me to be his girlfriend (me!) and we had our first kiss. Ten years later, we somehow made it through all of those meaningless high school fights, we survived the long-distance relationship during college, we are happily married (what I’d always dreamed about) and in three short months our daughter will be born. It’s amazing how things turned out and I wouldn’t have it any other way. My husband is the most genuinely nice and caring person I know… handsome, hardworking, thoughtful, funny as hell, dedicated… and he tells me each and every day how much he loves me. I can only count my lucky stars that he’s mine forever!!

Our first photo, summer 1998

Sophomore Homecoming

Junior year of high school

Ocean City, 2000

Sophomore year of college

MARRIED!!

Pretty wild.

aquabats and sunburn

We had a woooooonderful wonderful few days at the beach (thank you to Peter and Morgan for inviting all of us!). Everyone had their fill of seafood (except for me, of course - I stuck to salads and land animals), sun and scorching hot weather. By Friday evening I looked like a lobster thanks to a super long day lounging on the sand and at the beach house pool - and I still look like a lobster. Saturday we played some mini-golf in nearby Myrtle Beach and I have concluded that baby Ryan will make for one mean mini-golfer as Steve and I got first and second place in that round of betting. We used our winnings to buy the cutest t-shirts for the baby at the cutest store in Wilmington (http://www.edgeofurge.com/). Everyone got to feel the baby kick although I still think she's reserving the gigantic shoves and pokes for me... she never kicks hard like that when other people are trying to cop a feel! We had delicious breakfast every morning at a diner near the house and apparently even drunken Olympics took place one night. I was asleep (shocker!) but I'm pregnant, sunburned and always sleepy... cut me some slack. To top it all off, we made it home in a record six hours this afternoon (while getting our old school music fill).

I have found a new home for my photos online. I used to religiously upload every photo I took to Webshots and haven't done it in over a year. I found Picasa through Google and Blogger and like the format much better. I uploaded some photos from our beach trip - maybe I'll keep it up. The link is to the right just in case some of you (Morgan!) were wondering.


P.S. I am six months pregnant today! Time is flying!

sand in my swimsuit

Je dois faire un régime avant de partir en vacances.
“I have to go on a diet before we leave for vacation.”

Hah. This gem was the phrase of the day on my French calendar and it couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I attempted to squeeze into five bathing suits last night before I found one in my closet that fit me. I’ve never even worn this bathing suit before but I sure am glad I bought it a few years ago. We’ll see if I actually wear just the bathing suit and nothing else while we’re at the beach.

Yes! The beach! We’re leaving tomorrow for a hot and sunny (literally – 95 degrees and no clouds forecasted the entire time we’re there) few days on the coast of North Carolina… looking forward to not being at work and getting a little color on my pale tummy. Ryan likes laying out in the sunshine. The few times we’ve been laying out lately waiting for lacrosse games to start, she’s been kicking up a storm… so she’s either burning up or she loves it. She also loves barbecue – specifically pulled pork sandwiches. I could be mistaking her ferocious kicks for love when, in fact, she is just ticked off because I inhaled so much barbecue-y goodness that I’m cramping her space. I’ll stick with love since it makes for a better story. :)

Last week’s doctor’s appointment was… eh. I’m always excited to hear her heartbeat… and I’ve taken to keeping a notepad in my purse to write down questions that pop into my head (and it’s a cute notepad with a fashionable little pregnant girl at the top – thanks, Mom!), so I appreciate the chance to ask my awesome doctor a thousand and one questions. Unfortunately, the minimal amount of weight gain that I saw at my last appointment was no more. Nope, I am officially on the boat now… I am gaining away. My doctor didn’t seem to care (not as much as the nosy nurse did) and through a lot of research yesterday I discovered that I am well within the normal range at this point in my pregnancy. Still, I’ve found myself scrutinizing every morsel of food that I eat and last night I decided that I’d had enough. I’m pregnant. I’m hungry (all the time). The baby wants food. I want food. I don’t look like I’ve even gained a pound aside from the baby belly… so I don’t care. So there. Aside from the news from the scale, we did get to take a cute video of the doctor checking the heartbeat with the doppler. I sent it to my dad right away (in Kuwait… thousands of miles away!) and it was like he was there! Technology is crazy.

We also painted the nursery last weekend (when I say we, I really mean the best husband ever painted the nursery while I did some touch up painting aroud the condo). It’s called Zen Garden, which truly doesn’t suit the shade well at all. There’s an employee at Glidden that really needs to be replaced. It’s a not-so-bright apple green and if it looks as though we forgot to paint the bottom 31 inches, fear not – we are putting up a chair rail and shadow boxes (all white) soon. Her room is going to be adorable! Look at all the little clothes! See if you can spot the furball in the photo (where’s Lila???)… she is so nosy.

I was nice enough to bake cookies for my coworkers and they’re almost gone – I need to go snag a few. Next blog entry will be from a slightly tanned and more relaxed me!