Starting the countdown next week!

I still can't find my camera so pictures will be taken by my phone until I do. I missed out on two weeks worth of belly pictures because I can't find it and I'm determined not to miss any more. So here I am at 29 weeks. Next week, I'll be the big 30 and start the T-Minus 10 Week Countdown to the ever-glorious 40 Weeks!

A Very Happy Birthday Indeed

My birthday kind of started Friday when Dan and I went to dinner just the two of us. Today we did go to lunch with his family and that was delicious. We then stopped at the mall where I got two cropped cardigans to wear to work (on sale and with money my grandmother gave me) and two pairs of work shoes (my own money) and Dan eyed up a replacement TV. I also got to pick a DVD as Dan's present to me. The seasons of CSI have been dropping their prices like crazy and I picked that.

The TV was a long time coming. We've never had a brand new TV, we've only had hand-me-downs that Dan picked up over the years. We just finished making payments on our mattress. We had made a deal that we wouldn't get a new TV until we paid off the mattress. This TV is pretty awesome. I wanted a smaller TV so our living room wouldn't look as cluttered and this is a wide TV (I love the wide screen for movies!) but it's really thin. It's also HD and I'm still adjusting to that, because even standard def stuff looks different on a HD TV.

It's also been 6 full months since I started this blog and have done a pretty good job at updating almost every day. It's good having a goal to keep me motivated.

The Changing of The Locks

I've been saying that the first thing I'm going to do when we get our new house is laundry! Today, I made good on that promise! I had two loads of laundry to do so I took the baskets, my computer, and my knitting over to the new house and started the washer! I was there much longer than I anticipated, not sure if the washer has a problem or if I'm just not patient enough, but it didn't seem to move out of the wash cycle, even after more than an hour. I could stop it and manually turn the knob down to rinse. From there it rinsed and went into spin and stopped on its own, I thought it was odd that it would take so long to get itself to rinse from wash. Thankfully the dryer timer worked just fine.

We definitely need to update the dryer to a more energy efficient model, but as long as it mostly dries stuff, it can wait a while. It's a pretty old-looking dryer. I put both loads in for an hour and both loads came out with things that weren't quite dry yet. I figured the towels wouldn't be dry, and they went in for an extra few minutes, but when socks come out almost-dry-but-not-quite, that's generally not a good thing (unless they got stuck in the folds of the towel, which could have happened).

OUR HOUSE!

We got the house! Everything finally came together in time for settlement and we got the keys! So here is a photo tour of the house. Unfortunately they were all taken with my cell phone because Dan moved my camera and now I can't find it :-/ Anyway, the above picture is our tiny little bathroom. The bathtub/shower area all look pretty new and the sink is definitely brand new because in the listing pictures it was a more vintage sink (which I wish they had kept, but having a cabinet underneath is good too). We don't need to update anything in here. I'd like to get rid of the tile on the walls, but that's a want, not a need.

This will be our room, it's smaller than the one we've got now, which means I get to be creative with storage and take many trips to Ikea :)

This will be the baby's room, it's got two windows like ours. It's not as wide as ours, but it is just as long. I can't wait to see it with paint on the walls and baby stuff in it!

This is part of the kitchen. It's an eat-in kitchen, so behind where I'm standing is open space for a table and chairs. There is no dinning room so this is the only eating option besides the living room couch ;) The fridge is currently located in this open area and we don't like it there, so we'll be moving it out to the laundry room to have more space. Notice there is no dishwasher, good thing we already have our own! We're thinking of taking out either the drawers to the right of the sink or the cabinet to the right of the stove and putting one in, because if it's done before we're completely moved in, we won't miss the space.

This is the living room, also smaller than what we've got now, but again, more creative trips to Ikea! I've been all over their website for ideas and I can't wait to get my hands on a measuring tape and get in the store. I plan on being just like my dad and measuring everything in the house, creating floor plans with graph paper, and taking those into Ikea to see what fits. I also plan on taking pictures and printing those out so I can "see" what would look good where.

Dan also took me to Carrabba's today for my birthday (which is Sunday). Both of us have been craving some good Italian and we were quite happy to be able to go tonight :) I got my usual, Sirloin Marsala, and Dan got Pasta Carrabba. Both were delicious of course and we had a lovely dinner with just the two of us. My birthday is the same as Dan's brother, so when we go out and celebrate with all of them it's a shared birthday, this was nice because it was just for me :)

The day where nothing happened...

Seriously. I went to work, I came home, I went to sleep. That was my day. So here's a picture of Jimmy being adorable :)

Stupid Beltway

So I didn't end up making it into work today. I don't even have a picture for today, that's how stupid the beltway was being. While driving to my doctor's appointment (I left at 7:30am for my 9:00am appointment, I only live 30 miles away if that), I heard on the radio and saw on the electronic billboard thing that all four lanes of traffic were shut down a mere two exits before the one I wanted. Crap. I had been warned in enough time to get on 95 North and cut through the city that way, so that's what I did. Well, turns out traffic was also pretty bad going THE OTHER WAY, the direction I was now headed. I pull out my trusty GPS and have it direct me down back roads and through Towson. I arrive with 5 minutes to spare of my 15 minute grace period that the doctor's office gives everyone, so I arrived at 9:10am. Grr. My hope had been to get there early so they could start me on the glucose early, apparently I had no such luck.

I do the "wait 20 minutes in the waiting room" thing that all doctor's offices seem to do and then they call me back. I let them know I'm also doing the glucose test and they grab me the sugar drink. I had to drink the whole thing (only 10 oz.) in 5 minutes and then go back to the phlebotomist in an hour. It wasn't awful, I was expecting a horrible, chalky drink, but this was a fruit punch flavored thing. With my history of cravings (the first trimester being maple syrup and this trimester being Slurpees or virgin daiquiris), the drink was no problem, they had even refrigerated it which made it even easier to drink. I see the doctor for all of 5 minutes, like usual (blood pressure is perfect, stomach is measuring right where it should be, and I've still only gained about 20 lbs.), and go back out to the waiting room for my hour. I had come prepared with my iPod and my knitting so the hour flew by.

Once I'm all done in the office, I head out to my car and check the traffic. I do not have a smart phone, so by "check the traffic", I mean "call someone to use traffic.com for me." First I called Dan, and he then reminded me that he was out with a friend and not near a computer. Knowing my mom was at work, I call Dan's mom (I had questions to ask her about house stuff anyway). Turns out the beltway is STILL horribly backed up, this time from new accidents and, of course, they were in the direction I needed to go, right before the exit I needed. At this point, it's almost 11am. On a good day with no traffic, it takes me at least an hour to drive between my doctor's office and work. I call in and let them know that there's no way that I'm going to make it to work in any kind of reasonable amount of time. If I had headed to work, it would have been an hour and a half--at least--to get there, which puts me at 12:30 (or later). We get out of work at 3:45 which meant that I would have been there for only a few hours, making my total travel time in the car longer than what I would have worked.

Dan was hanging out on that side of the beltway with his friend, so I met up with them to put off more driving (I don't mind being in the car for prolonged periods when I'm not the one driving or when someone else is with me) and we got some lunch. I think I ended up driving home around 3 or so and getting home only a little while before I would have gotten home from work.

I talked to our Spanish teacher much later, and she said that even when she was going home the beltway was pretty bad. So all in all, the beltway completely sucked today and never recovered from it. Or it was being nasty out of spite for some reason.

Mmm Sandwich.

I love sandwiches. I have pretty much given them up because I love deli meat and I'm really not supposed to eat it until it's been heated because of my increased risk of bacterial infection. I only cheat every once in a while and one of my favorite cheats is the Bacon Turkey Bravo at Panera Bread. It introduced me to Gouda cheese and I'm so thankful for it. Trader Joe's has sliced Gouda in their cheese section and I LOVE to put it on my sandwiches (when I'm not pregnant).

It's time once again for my monthly 2-hour hangout at Panera while I wait for my meeting at work to start. We get out at 3:45 and the meeting doesn't start until 7, so I'm stuck with about 2.5 hours to kill in the meantime. Panera has great food and free wi-fi, so here I am. I'm actually kind of glad that the meeting got bumped back to tonight (was supposed to be last week but we had the snow that canceled stuff) because my doctor's appointment is tomorrow morning. So I'm staying late tonight, but I get to sleep in a little bit tomorrow. The appointment is at 9, but I'm going to try and get there at 8:30 to see if they'll give me the sugar stuff early, so I'll be leaving around 7:30--which means I can sleep until 7 :) I ordered hot lunch tomorrow so I don't even have to pack lunch, I can just shower, dress and go! I do need to eat breakfast because of how long I'll be at the doctor's office, but I can't have carbs because it could throw off the glucose test and give them a false positive. I definitely don't want a false positive, because if I test positive, that means I go back for another test that's a 3 hour test! That would be my whole day right there, although I could probably get away with scheduling it during Spring Break, which is at the end of this month (which is March now!).

I can gauge how my hunger has changed month to month by my ability to resist getting more food at Panera while I sit here. I've been here for an hour now, and have been eying the menu seriously considering ordering more food. I'm definitely thinking some mac & cheese but what I'm really debating about is a frozen caramel. That's their version of Caramel Frappiccinos and it's even more amazing than Starbucks. I think so anyway because it's way more caramel flavor and less coffee. Normally, I feel a little bad about sitting for so long, but it's pretty empty in here today, normally around this time it's filled up and I can hear how busy they are. The people at the counter actually have time to breathe. I think it's because I'm at a two person booth today instead of a four person booth. That's mostly what I feel bad about when it gets busy, but they only seem to put the outlets at four people booths. I fully charged my laptop today though so I won't need to plug in.

The baby is moving around like crazy since I sat down. He was pretty active today too, but he's really moving now. I guess that means he liked the sandwich. I loved food to begin with, but being pregnant has more taken my guilt away than added to my appetite. Don't get me wrong, I can definitely eat almost all day long, and bigger portions too, but I wonder how much of that is pregnancy and how much is I've been giving my stomach what it wants, when it wants it. When you're training to run a marathon, you run a little farther every day and soon you don't notice distances that used to bother you. I'm sure eating is the same way, I've been eating more so now I'm able to eat more. I shouldn't get more food right now, because my wallet would love me, but my stomach (and probably the baby) would also be happy if I got more.

So my procrastination on Facebook and blogging paid off. It's almost time for me to leave and I've successfully fought the urge to get some mac & cheese. I will be getting a frozen caramel thing though, but to-go and to get me through this meeting and the drive back home afterward. I've been going to bed between 8 and 9. I try not to go to bed before that because otherwise I'll just wake up early like I did yesterday. I'm not really looking forward to my doctor's visit tomorrow, but I am looking forward to only a half day at work. If the appointment goes too long, I'm allowed to just use a sick day and not come in at all (it's an early release day, which means for the last hour of school the kids are gone and the teachers can work on their own or have meetings), which is a nice option to have. I'm hoping it doesn't go too long, because I want to save my sick days (they roll over, so if I go back in the fall, I can keep what I have left), but I'm glad that there's not pressure to get back to work by a certain time.