Family Room Updates

First and foremost, check out our new carpet!!!

I know that you don't have a "before" example to compare it to, but trust me this is a HUGE improvement! Our old carpet was stained and smelly! It smelled like dirty, stinky, uncared for animals (from the prior owners). We have steam cleaned and baking soda'ed and tried all sorts of deodorizers, but no matter what we do the smell just kept coming back! Clearly it was stained clear to the carpet pad and there was nothing we could do to fix the problem but invest in new carpet. So we finally did and we are VERY happy with the results! It looks so much fresher and cleaner in our house I can't even tell you!

And to go with our new carpet some fresh new pillows for the couch!

I got these on Overstock.com, $30 for the set, which isn't too bad considering the exorbitant cost of decorative pillows. It's ridiculous! It's nothing to have to pay $30 PER PILLOW at some stores!

So, what do you think of the updates?

Our bountiful harvest

Yep, this is it so far. One tomato.




There are a few more still on the vine ripening and several green ones. There is one jalapeno pepper that's nearly finished growing, and a couple of tiny eggplants and cucumbers, but I'm getting worried about what the garden will actually produce since it's nearly the end of August and it's going to start getting chilly here in the next few weeks!

Anyway, my little tomato was VERY good. You sometimes forget how fresh veggies are supposed to taste when you're used to eating produce from the grocery store. This was definitely a fresh vine ripened tomato. I enjoyed it with a nice scoop of cottage cheese. YUM!

13 Weeks and a Sex Prediction

I'm at 13 Weeks today. This is good.

4 days from now I will officially cross over into the coveted Second trimester. Land of beautiful pregnancy and small baby bumps. Purportedly, the 2nd Tri is the time post- all of the icky 1st Tri vomiting and fatigue and pre- being too large to feel good. I figure the 2nd Tri must be pretty darn good considering people voluntarily go through the 1st Tri again with subsequent pregnancies. I just can't imagine putting myself through this special level of Hell again.

My appointment went well and I haven't gained any weight yet (see: above mentioned vomiting). Blood pressure is good and we got another peak at Bean as they did an ultrasound. This time they were able to do it on my tummy vs. the previous one which was trans-vaginal and just as special and uncomfortable as it sounds. A good thing to note: Baby's head is becoming a lot more proportionate to its body. In early develpment feti (is that the plural of fetus?) tend to look more like an alien or something that should be named Skeletor than a tiny human.

According to this U/S Baby's heart rate was between 158 and 159 beats per minute. A good strong heart rate and one that indicates that this alien being inside my body is a girl.

An Old Wive's Tale says that if baby's heart beat is less than 140 bpm it will be a boy, whereas above 140 bpm indicates a girl. I don't know how 'old' said wive's tale is as I don't think they started doing a lot of fetal heart monitoring until the 80s and of course there are scientific studies that indicate this unit of measure is a bunch of bull cocky, but it's fun to think about anyway,

We should be able to actually find out the sex in approximately 2 months. Apparently right around 14 Weeks or so the fetus will begin to exhibit either male or female genitalia even though sex is determined right at the time of conception. Understandable though since everything is so tiny right now.

Mark really wants a new TV.

I keep telling him to wait until our current TV (a hand-me-down from his Dad that's perfectly fine albeit large and bulky) dies a peaceful death following a long life. I hate the thought of purchasing a new TV just to do so when we have a perfectly good one right now!

He does not agree with my sensible side so he has prepared a short PowerPoint presentation to persuade me to his way of thinking. I will post the presentation, but you must keep in mind that you missed out on the best part: the argument was made in Mark's best Billy May's (rest in peace, Billy) impression.

In honor of Mark's wish and his persuasive argument I'm hosting a poll, please vote.

I've just spent a lot of time lately erm... indisposed. Mostly on my bathroom floor.

That's right fans and friends, I'm officially knocked up!

Squeeeee!!!!

Please forgive my absence as I have spent my last few weeks puking, nauseous, fighting to keep my eyes open, or sleeping. I'm honestly lucky if I get a shower in. I'm sure you understand. Growing a human is hard work!

So, here's a little timeline to catch everyone up. I'm currently 9 weeks along and due February 23rd.

Week 1 (Week 3): My BBT goes up when it usually takes a dive. I try not to let myself get too much hope and anxiously wait for cycle day 11. That morning, I woke up early to pee on a stick and what did I see, but a second faint line!



OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!! Loads of squeeing ensued. I also found out that "they" (the authorities on all things pregnancy) add in the 2 weeks prior to conception (supposedly the amount of time since the start of your last period if you have a textbook 28-day cycle) so I was actually nearly 4 weeks pregnant! Woohoo!

Week 4: Wheeee! Pregnancy is fun! Hubs and I decided that we wanted to wait a bit to announce the news to anyone because we were still in a bit of disbelief. I called and made my first pre-natal appointment and they wanted to see my in Week 6. Hunger kicked in right away as well as sore bewbies.

Week 5: Uggghhh! Pregnancy isn't so fun anymore... Nausea hit me like a tidal wave and I spent the latter half of Week 5 and the first half of Week 6 with my head in the toilet. Seriously, it was as if my body was fighting off some sort of terrible stomach bug that had invaded my body. I spent this time eating saltine crackers and baked potatoes. That's it. Oh, and drinking diet, caffeine free ginger ale. It was about this time that I wondered why so many women voluntarily put themselves in this situation. I mean... women have been having babies for hundreds of years. It's what our bodies are made to do. You'd think that our bodies would have evolved over time to deal with the hormones that come with early pregnancy. Guess not.

Week 6: More vomiting. Met with a Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) at my OB/GYN pratice. She said that nausea indicates a healthy baby. Good news for me and baby. They did all the usual check-up stuff, a pelvic exam, and a pap smear (uck), even though I just had one a few months ago. I find 2 in one year to be entriely unnecessary. They took urine and about a quart of blood.

Week 7: More vomiting.

Week 8: More vomiting. Really, there wasn't much else going on during this time.

Week 9: Some days I'm still sick, other days the nausea and vomiting seems to be replaced with ferocious fatigue. Fatigue that is bone deep and makes you feel sick. It's a wondrous change. I'm actually feeling much better today and even ventured to the grocery store for the first time in a month. This is of course after I slept 12 hours Friday night, took a 2 hour nap from 6-8pm on Saturday evening, and slept another 12 hours on Saturday night. Gee do I feel refreshed! I just need to figure out how to capture this rested feeling while working 8.5 hours a day...

Anyhoo, last Monday we went to the doctor for our very first ultrasound! I was able to enjoy a huge sigh of relief because there is definitely a baby in there (at least the doctor says so) and it's growing where it's supposed to and how it's supposed to. Even though I had no symptoms I had nearly convinced myself that something was wrong. It was growing in the wrong spot; there was nothing in there, something. But the doctor says everything looks great and we even going to see Lil' Bean move! It kinda just looked like a little gray blob, or a peanut or something, but we did see his little arms move! It was the cutest thing. And we got to see his little heart beating. It was amazing.

Here's a pic:



Looks like a baby, right? Sure.

So, that's kind of where we're at. Super excited, still in a bit of disbelief, but we're starting to tell people. And you're people. So... yay!

I promise I'll be around more. I've got a ton of stuff to discuss and hopefully I won't be spending as much time on the bathroom floor.

Pee Ess: I know you're jealous of my super-fab Paint skillz. If you study, Young Grasshopper, you too may master Paint one day.

Happy 1-Year!

As of June 18th I have had this blog going for one year! I can't believe that it's been a year already because the very first post that I made was shortly after our wedding to recap the festivities.

June 7th, last Sunday, was our one year anniversary! I guess we are no longer considered newlyweds. Kind of sad, but also exciting. We spent our first anniversary very quietly, relaxing together in the backyard with the puppy and reminiscing about what we were doing a year ago at that time. Let me tell ya, I really really enjoyed our wedding, the planning process, actual ceremony, the honeymoon, all of it, but I am soooo glad that it's now behind us! Our lives have been much more enjoyable since everything has calmed down!

One thing we did not do was eat our top cake tier. Unfortunately, we lost our cake in the Great Power Outage of September 2008. There was a terrible windstorm that left us without power for nearly a week. Well, needless to say, I'm sure that year old cake would be even worse once it was melted and refrozen, so we just cut our losses and pitched it back in September. Instead, we had a nice grilled dinner on the back deck. I'm sure it tasted better than year old cake would have.

I can't wait to see what is ahead of us for our second year of marriage. I can only hope that it's as great as our first!



In honor of my bloggiversary, I have changed the look of my blog a little bit. I thought it could use a bit of a change since it's a whole year old! What do you think?

::Sits Down Quietly in the Back of the Classroom::

I apologize for being an AWOL blogger. I've been busy and although a lot has been going on, I have yet to blog about it. I'll take pictures of something and think to myself, I'll be sure to put that on the blog! Nope. Doesn't happen. Why? Because (and I fully admit it) I'm lazy.

So, on to what has been keeping us busy for the last few weeks.

Ugh... I'm writing this as Go Cubs Go! is blaring out of the TV at a much too high for comfort level and Mark is dancing/lip syncing along. Apparently the Cubbies are celebrating a win. All I know is that there has been waaaay too much sports on our TV between golf and baseball today.

Okay, back on track.

2 weeks ago: Yard Sale.

Being the good strong community people that we are, we participated in the Community Yarage (not sure what the real difference is between a yard and garage sale ::shrug::) Sale that was held on June 6th.

Our set up:

Let me tell ya, hosting a yard sale sure is an errrm... interesting way to meet all of your neighbors. At about 8.45 on yard sale morning, as Mark and I were still fairly early in the process of getting set up, Old Lady (as we call her) from across the street comes over to check out our wares.

Now, this seems perfectly innocent of course, but here's something you must know - Old Lady is a notorious busy body. When we first moved in, she welcomed us by coming up to our open window as Mark was closing up the house for the evening, poking her face up to the screen and asking if she could talk to Mark for a minute. After the initial shock of someone sneaking up to our window at 10 at night, Mark went outside to see what she wanted. What couldn't wait til daytime you ask? She was coming to tell us that it's safer to leave our porch light on overnight. Mindyourownbusinesslady!

Alas, I digress. So, we got to rub elbows with Old Lady and a couple of people from her brood a few times during the course of the sale. They were definitely our best customers. We also found out that her daughter (Vonda, I believe) eloped with her semi-toothless husband a few months back to Niagara Falls for the weekend before coming back to Ohio to settle in with her mom. They recently moved out and got their very own apartment. Yay for them! Okay, I probably sound mean here, it's kind of hard not to while still relaying the stories, but in all honesty they are pretty nice.

We met our hippy neighbors along with their daughter and mulleted-son. They drove up in a giant circa early 80s blue Lincoln. They bought a veil for the little girl to play dress up in. Hippy-Dad nearly had a heart attack about that one.

We met our slightly-down-the street-and-across-the-road-neighbor along with who we thought were her grandchildren, but turned out to be her own kids. Oops! She informed us that she's friendly, but not too friendly. "Don't be coming down to my house right after my husband leaves for work in the morning for a cup of coffee and a chat. I had a neighbor like that down in Florida". Okay... I'll keep that in mind.

Anyway, the garage sale was quite a success. We got rid of quite a few things that were doing nothing but taking up storage space and ended up making some cash in the process. Mark's mom came down to help us with our endeavor and she's quite the saleslady! She talked a little old lady into purchasing a microwave by going down the her car and all but knocking on the car window to wheel and deal with her! In the end, Little Old Lady ended up with a gently used microwave and us with $15. Pretty good deal for a microwave that came with the house that we never even used!

Ultimately we ended up offloading 1 of 2 desks, 2 microwaves, a bookshelf, a carpet shampooer, and several random knick knacks. It's amazing what people will buy if you put a 25 cents sticker on it. For real.

I think this is the end of our Yarage Sale career at least for this year.