I need a stiff drink...

This would be the only "stiff" drink I'm allowed to have. After dealing with report cards several hours a day for what is now almost a month, I really could go for a really, really tall glass of wine...

Belly Timeline... (also Blogger is pissing me off with this picture crap)

12 Weeks

13 Weeks

14 Weeks.

The Gibsons: 1 - Jack Frost: 0

 

Our house is 100 years old. Well, the downstairs is anyway, the upstairs where we live was added in the 1940's during the war and was literally a "Mother-in-law Suite." As with many old houses, the windows can be a bit drafty. That's where Frost King comes in. I have distinct memories of my dad putting these up in our old house in the wintertime. Turns out it was a good thing I remembered that because Dan's never used the stuff before and wouldn't have thought about it. It's pretty simple, the box has sheets of plastic and double-sided tape. You line the window frames with the double-sided tape, spread the plastic over the window, seal, then using a hair-dryer you heat the plastic until it becomes taut over the window (until all the wrinkles go away). This gives you a inexpensive weatherproofing that your drafty windows wouldn't normally have.

For 9 sheets of plastic we paid around $13 at Home Depot. It helps to have the brand name when you ask for it, and it also helps if you ask someone with gray hair--we learned that the hard way, the young guy we asked first sent us to the window aisle where they keep sun-blocking film. Usually it's near weatherproofing or winterizing stuff though. We did the three windows in our living room, the two in our bedroom (including the one with the AC unit in it, I'm particularly proud of that one), and had to use two sheets on the door in our bedroom that leads to the outside (let's more air in on nice days when opened, but is almost more drafty than the windows!). For a couple of first-timers, I'd say we did pretty good. I've been keeping an eye on the curtains to see if they move with the wind since we put the plastic up and I'm proud to say that they haven't moved an inch, even with the high winds we've been having today. This is totally a step up for us from last year, where we didn't even think about it until it was too late, then we just had blankets up over the windows to help keep the air out, which didn't help much.

I also cleaned today which makes me feel a whole lot better! I hate clutter and both of us have been letting it pile up a lot lately. Me with being so tired all the time and Dan with, well, never wanting to clean ever ;) There's still a lot that needs to be done, but I'm satisfied for now. The living room looks better and the dinning room table has been cleared off to the point where if we had guests over for dinner, we could probably eat there again XD I also tidied up the bathroom. I didn't so much clean it as I dusted and swept. I'm still unsure about cleaning products vs. fetus so I only used a tiny bit to help get the hard water stains in the sink up. The shower is a never-ending battle with the hard water so I'm not even going there unless it gets super gross. Even then, baking soda and vinegar work just fine. All the dust is off the floor and the sink is shiny again, which are the two things I need to fool myself into thinking that the bathroom is cleaner than it is. Tomorrow I have a photography gig, which is awesome, but that's in the morning and I'm hoping I'll be able to motivate myself into putting clothes away. They were piled up in front of the door in the bedroom to help with the draft (and because I was lazy) but now that the draft isn't an issue, I really have no excuse not to put them away.

And finally, a couple pictures from my pre-Thanksgiving playdate with the coolest kid in the world ;) The bearded guy is a friend from church who was back from college for the holiday.

Reading. He wanted the book read 3 or 4 times, but only the first couple of pages, lol.

Jam session. David on the odd cat piano (it meows randomly when you don't play with it) and the two of us on maracas.

Luke's usual spot. (Thanksgiving 2010)

This is Luke's favorite begging spot. When he's not there, he's got his head in your lap if you're still at the table begging for scraps. He got some ham this year and I think some turkey. Sarah and I did not have our yearly "when did we get Luke" argument because earlier this year we found some old vet paperwork in the shed with his DOB on them. Luke turned 13 this past May, he's getting up there in years. I still remember the day we got him like it was yesterday and he still acts like the puppy he was back then. He's a bit slower and a little less playful, but he's still got that sparkle in his eyes and that smile on his face when you walk in the door. We couldn't have asked for a better first dog. He came housebroken and trained to sit and heel, he had some initial separation anxiety when we would leave the house to go on errands, but after a year or two, he finally figured out we were coming back and calmed down. I'm thankful for a lot of things this year, a lot of things, but on the top of my list is that Luke is still Luke and he was with us another year. I make sure and pet and hug him a lot when I'm back at my parents, with a dog this old, things can get bad real fast and I want to make sure that nothing happens without him knowing how much I still love him. Aaaand now that the pregnancy hormones have kicked in (along with the waterworks), I'm off to bed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I got your back!

My kids make me smile every day. Today, this was the lovely artwork of the 4th grade girls :-)

Baby Update: Went to my 2nd OB appointment today and got to hear the heartbeat! It was such a funny sound, it reminded me of train wheels going over a split in the tracks (where one rail meets another), but soooooo good to hear. I talked to my doctor about my dyshidrosis and she said that it was fine to use the cream I usually use (it's a steroid cream which is why I wanted to ask first) which is awesome and I can finally get rid of these zombie hands! I actually lost 3 pounds from my previous appointment, which is typical for people in their first trimester due to nausea and food aversions, but I need to try to avoid losing weight from here on out. Everything else looks so good that they don't need to see me again until January. My doctor was funny and as we said goodbye, she also said "Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!" lol.  January will be when I also have my 2nd ultra sound and it will be more high tech than what they had in the office (I have to go to a radiology place) to "rule out anomalies" and find out the sex if we want! I still haven't officially decided if I want to find out or not, but I have a feeling I'll get there and won't be able to resist ;)

My new hoodie!

The back has my name on it which is awesome! :-)

Bags are for bunnies.

At least, that's what Brissa thinks. She loves playing in them and tearing them to shreds. It's part of that burrowing thing, I'm sure, but it's also freaking adorable!

Blogger needs to get their picture server problems fixed pronto! I'm getting tired of only being able to upload pictures via my phone. My real camera takes so much better pictures and uploading the normal way forces me to actually sit down and write real posts. Granted I can send a bunch of text with the picture from my phone, but it's soooo much easier to type on a real keyboard than it is on a phone keyboard. My phone has the QWERTY keyboard, and that's definitely a step up from my last one, but it's not the same. I can touch-type, which means not look at the keyboard when I'm typing, I learned forever ago and I'm teaching my students to do it now, the phone keyboard is lame and I can't really touch type on it.

Baby updates: I'm officially in my second trimester, which means I'm in Month 4--a few more weeks and I'll be halfway there! My 2nd OB appointment is in 2 days and I'm hoping we'll be able to actually hear the baby's heartbeat (we only saw it on the sonogram last time, but it was going fast!). Morning sickness has pretty much vanished, aside from the rare days when I go to bed super early from being exhausted and forget to eat dinner, then I'm nauseated in the morning. My boobs are sore and I'm not really sure if I've had cravings or not. Generally I like food and I want food more often, fast food or restaurant food specifically. I did really want syrup for an entire week and so I asked Dan to get me some waffles. That was awesome because now I have something sweet to snack on in the mornings. I definitely craved Chipotle after having some earlier this week, so Dan and I had that for lunch yesterday and it was amazing. I think that may have sated the Chipotle craving for now. I would definitely eat another one of their steak burritos if someone put it in front of me or if I happened to be hungry somewhere a Chipotle was located, but I don't think I'll be sending Dan out for another burrito anytime soon.

Other than the food and the boobs, I've had almost no other symptoms and I'm not complaining! I've had cramps here and there as the baby gets bigger, but nothing like I get on my normal periods. I also get them if I move too fast after being in one position for too long, so now I get up slowly or roll over slowly and that pretty much takes care of that.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this or not, but I have this awesome thing called a BeBand (it's from Target, another popular name is BellaBand). It's an elastic band that you can wear at any point in your pregnancy to help hold your pants up. I've been using it to transform all my pre-pregnancy pants into maternity pants until my belly's big enough to need the real thing. What it does is allow you to un-button (and un-zip as necessary) your pants to allow room for your expanding belly, the band smoothes your pants and holds them snug against you so that you're the only one who knows your pants are undone. I've been wearing mine for a month and a half or two months now. My mom was in Target yesterday and asked me if I had seen them, she was surprised when I said I'd been wearing one for a while--she had no idea! Proof that they really are subtle. I would insert a picture of what it looks like, but as I've established, the photo feature is not working for me right now so you'll have to settle for the above link.

Best Q

Ignoring from my completely horrible drawing of the command button, this is the best Q I think I've ever written. I do not have the world's best handwriting, so when I get a letter or a word right, I admire it ;-)

The man your man could smell like.

Apparently my man does smell like that man.

I'm on a horse.

Creative Kids

One of my 7th Grade girls made this ad for her project. Part of the directions were that the ads be aimed at the people in the class, in this case, 7th and 8th grade girls. She wanted to do dirt bikes and I was intrigued. I told her if she could aim it for her target audience, I was all for dirt bikes. This is what she came up with and I totally dig it!

The Virus...

It's been too long Exceed, much too long...

Arigga Bamboo

In camp we sung this song about Princess Pat who sailed the seven seas with something called "arigga bamboo". My bamboo came from Ikea--the best store EVER--and lives in my bathroom for color. It's better for me than a cactus because I don't have to worry about forgetting to water it, I just make sure there's always water in the vase!

Things that make me drool...

28 glorious MacBooks all in an awesome, rolling cart that charges them when not in use. It's pretty amazing to behold.

Mmm, Panera

 

Panera for dinner again. Another late meeting at work. I'm in the very back of the restaurant, and was by myself in this section for a while. But they must have filled up (there's a wall blocking my view of the rest of the tables) because people came back to sit in my section. Two old ladies sat at the table right next to mine talking about contractors who owe them money or something. I started off the evening by visiting Wal Mart in search of some cheap maternity clothes. What I found was that the Wal Mart near work doesn't even have a maternity section! I did find a sweater and some long sleeve T's that I can wear to work for a while, which was good because I need some more tops to wear to work. After that disappointing trip (and wandering through the baby section), I headed over to Panera where I've been hidden in the back surfing the internet. I would be grading projects, but I don't have a pen, and I would be watching Netflix or Hulu but I don't have headphones (or decent internet for streaming), so surfing and blogging is what I've been doing the last hour and a half.

My next OB appointment is two weeks from today, today also marks 12 Weeks, or as I like to call it "the last full week of the first trimester", but that's a little long. This time next week I will officially be in my second trimester! Time feels like it's passing slowly and quickly. The weekend always feels like it should arrive much sooner, but I'm always amazed that I've made it to another weekend already! I found out about the baby around week 5 or 6, and I'm now twice that far along! There are long periods of time in the day where I don't even realize I'm pregnant (that will change when I start to show), but I never go a full day without thinking about the baby. So each day can drag on and fly by at the same time (Monday sure flew) which is what each week does. I can't believe I'm almost in my second trimester already, I know I'll probably start showing soon. I get cramps every time the baby gets bigger (no movement that I can feel yet though), but that's just because my body is making space so Baby can grow.

I brought a pregnancy magazine with me to Panera (another thing the prenatal program sent me) but I didn't feel like whipping it out with people sitting next to me. It's not strangers' business that I'm pregnant and if I get unsolicited advice from people I don't know, I can't guarantee polite things will come out of my mouth. I already told Dan that if strangers touch my stomach when I get bigger, I'm touching theirs right back. If they ask first, I'll ask if I can touch theirs. I don't see what about being pregnant (or toting a baby around) makes it socially acceptable to invade someone's bubble and touch them (or ask to hold the baby). I will answer questions if they are general and polite, but if they get personal (will you be vaccinating, breastfeeding, etc.) I'm going to tell them that it's none of their business. I'll be polite the first time, and if I get people who feel like they need to tell me or need to find out, I'm not staying polite. Because sometimes people don't know they're being rude, and I don't have a problem letting them know if a question is rude or too personal. I think a lot of the time, we're too polite in that we don't let someone know if a behavior or comment is none of their business, how can people learn if they're not told? Someone has to tell them, and I'm totally ok with being that someone if the stranger starts it.

What to expect

I apologize for the super lameness that is today's picture. Blogger is being a butt and having server issues with uploading pictures from the computer so today's is brought to you by my phone.

I've skimmed through parts of the book and my initial opinion is: just about all of the information is on the internet. Most of what I read in the book, I had read one place or another online at some point in time. It's nice to have it all in one place, and for it to be available if the internet or power goes down, but overall, if you research like crazy about everything going on in your life like I do, most of this is not new information. I'm sure this book was fantastic a few years ago before the internet was as massive as it is now. I'm told that the "First Years" book is more helpful, but we'll see. I didn't have to buy this, which was a plus side. I signed up for a pre-natal program with my health insurance and they sent this to me as a complimentary gift thing.

Belly - Nothing to show so far.

I wanted to post this just because I can. I'll be taking pictures every week starting now, Week 11, so I can eventually have a time-lapse set of belly pictures! I might be showing a tiny bit, but since this is the first picture I can't really tell. I wasn't going to start taking pictures until I could feel something definite when I press my hand to my stomach. Right now it's just a lot of beer gut I'm trying to work off (or was until the baby decided that fast food was how s/he wanted to start the pregnancy off), and I can feel a little bit when my bladder's full (which incidentally makes for better sonogram images, who knew?), but I don't think you can really see anything yet. Dan told someone that I was starting to show already and that earned him several nights on the couch. I need to get him a pregnant dad book or something because the only way I'd be showing now is if I was under 5 foot and weighed less than a hundred pounds, and even then it wouldn't be much.

I've been wearing baggy clothes mostly, still loving my elastic band to keep my pants comfy! I need to go to Wal Mart and get some more cheap, baggy, nicer shirts to wear to work, I'm running low on options. Also, my boobs are huge. I've already gone up inches and a cup size! I went to Target a week or so ago and bought some new bras off the sale rack (best decision ever), and just to see how it felt, I added a nursing bra to the stack (3 total purchased). I can't tell if it's just way that size fits or if it's because the cups aren't padded and therefore conform to me, but the nursing bra is by far the most comfortable of the bras. I just have to make sure and layer if I want to wear it in the winter, otherwise everyone will know when I'm cold...

The Belly Book

My mom wanted to buy me a pregnancy journal so I went on Amazon and searched through the pages of journals to find this gem. It's adorable and so completely me! It organizes everything by trimester, then is broken down into weeks. Best of all there are places for sonogram pictures and belly pictures!

I ended up making photocopies of the sonogram pictures because the journal said that sonograms tend to fade over time and making copies is the best way to preserve them. So the copies are on the pages and the actual sonograms are taped on the inside cover. :)

Men in Black

 

Priests vs. High Schoolers = the annual Men in Black game! It's held every year as a way of raising awareness for vocations to the priesthood and several parishes from the county participate. I'm proud to say that HT always has the largest group of fans in the stands, we've maintained our rep as the loud, obnoxious group, and this year was no different! Tonight's game was the closest I've seen for a while! In the history of the MIB game, the kids always win over the priests, this year the priests almost had it! With 40 seconds left in the 4th period, the score was 40 to 40. The kids ended up pulling out a few last minute shots (as did the priests but it wasn't enough) and the final score was 44-41 to the kids.

It was great to hang out with everybody from HT, especially the newly Confirmed. We even had a couple former Youth Ministers show up (yay!) and it was soooo good to catch up and say hi to the little kiddies! :) By the end of the game, I was losing my voice from talking and cheering so much, hopefully it'll be back tomorrow, although I don't think Dan would mind the break ;)

This picture is what we did when the "Yutes" (the kids) made their free throws. For some reason, Spirit Fingers came out and I'm not sure why, because according to the UMD grad, you just stand there with your arms out and go "woosh" if they make it. HTYM's always been a little off and does tend to make things their own. According to Steve, "You don't have to be crazy to join HTYM, we'll train you."  XD

All in all, a VERY good night and a great game!

One of my favorite things.

I love, love, love Totino's Pizza and have since I was a kid. Our grocery store doesn't carry them for some bizarre reason but Giant does and they were on sale!

11 Weeks Today :)

Today marks 11 weeks. In two weeks, I will officially be in my Second Trimester, yayyy! I've come up with a few "you know you're pregnant when" that I thought of just now.

You Know You're 11 Weeks When...

You can't decide between staying with your heating pad on the couch or getting up to get food

You waddle, but only because your back hurts.

And that's all I got because I'm now distracted by "Important Things With Demetri Martin" and Totino's Pizza XD

All Saints Day!

The school makes a big deal out of All Saints Day: no classes, we break up into teams of mixed grades, and spend the whole second half of the day doing different activities. The first part of the day is all about saint presentations in classrooms, I sat in on the 8th graders and they all did so well! The Kindergartners even came to watch some of the "big kids" do their presentations, there was some overlap with saints (the big kids chose some of the same saints they did) so they especially loved that! My team for activities had a lot of fun, even if the 4th grade boys won't admit it. ;)