November 6th countdown

I'm sitting at work and I've had the worst cramps I've had in a long time. It's probably because I'm big now. Also my little baby has been moving all day long! It's funny to feel and I like it right now.

I found out that Dan's work is so busy right now he told me not to plan on him being there for the ultrasound (November 6th for those of you that don't already know). I tried really REALLY hard not to take this news too badly. I just said, "Well, at least Jenny will go with me. I'll miss you, but I'll make sure they record the still photos." (They forgot to record them during Jenny's ultrasound so she doesn't have anything to look at and remind her.) What I wanted to say was, "It'll only take like half an hour! They can't spare you for half an hour?! I'm not complaining about you getting home at 8PM and having no time to spare so I should at least get this one little thing! You're going to miss all the live action stuff where you can actually see the baby move! You're going to miss discovering our baby's sex! You're going to miss everything!" But I figure he already feels bad about not being able to go so I shouldn't make it worse. Plus, he probably doesn't realize he'll miss all the "live action" shots.

PS. Don't mention to him that I complained about him not making the ultrasound. He can't really help it. I just wanted to complain a little.

Mommies

In the past two days four pregnant women looking for scrubs to wear have come in to the store. When you're big and nothing fits, I guess scrub bottoms are the way to go in Utah. I do wonder if I'm noticing these women because I'm pregnant and getting big or if there really are a lot of them coming in right now. Who knows.

Here's something that nobody ever told me: when your baby is growing inside of you and getting bigger your insides feel like they want to explode. It's the feel you get after Thanksgiving dinner when you're so full it hurts, only you're not full. In fact, most of the time you're starving. There's just no room for anything left.

My husband has his interview at UW on Monday. Don't forget to send him some good thoughts and prayers! I'm so nervous for him! (I'm sure he's nervous too.) He's done so much preparation for his interview(s) this year. Plus, he's had the opportunity to realize that he really does want to be a doctor, going to med school isn't just another box on his life's checklist. I hope that translates to the interviewers. I know he's my husband so, of course, I think he would make the best doctor ever, but I really do think that he would be such a capable person for that job.

Week 19 present from my sister: I heart daddy onsie! So cute and so appropriate for right now! I'm sure he'll love it when he sees it!

Lite Steam-A-Seam 2

This question is for anyone out there that works with fabric. I went to the fabric store the other day to purchase supplies for Christmas presents. I needed to get some fusable web. I instictively picked out the wonder-under because that's what I grew up with and I know how to use it really well. The lady at the counter told me that this new "Lite Steam-A-Seam 2" is really far supperior to what I had chosen and it had this extra feature of being paper lined on both sides of the glue, not just one. When you pealed the first paper off the glue is slightly sticky so it will stick to the fabric a little before you use the iron on it so you can be sure to put the piece exactly where you want it. I bought the song and dance hook line and sinker so I paid the extra to get the new and improved technology. My question is do you, that have worked with both brands, think it's worth it? The paper lining that you peal off first is falling off while I'm trying to trace my stencil so it doesn't seem like that second lining is really necessary. I'm not sure. What do you think? Also, what is your favorite brand of fusable web? Should I ditch both brands for one far superior that I don't yet know about?

I have two funny things to post about my husband today.

Funny Story #1

Yesterday, while my husband was at work, it snowed. It was the yucky rain-type of snow so I figured it would probably melt before he even got to see it. I have no idea why I thought this because the later it got the more snow-like it got and everything stuck. It was only about 1/2", but when my sweetie came home at 8 PM last night he was overjoyed! He actually suggested we walk to his brother's house in the cold at around 9 PM. I made him drive, but when we got over there he bent down in their front yard and made, "The first snowball of the season!" and threw it right at my butt. He didn't miss. It was really wet. I think growing up in Aberdeen made him lunie about snow.

Funny Story #2

So after posting about trying to find some maternity jeans I found a pair of jeans at gap. They are awesome! Mostly because my insides aren't being squeezed, which is why I have decided that I will only ever wear elastic waisted pants from now on for the rest of my life. Well, probably just for the rest of my pregnancy. I only purchased one pair of pants because they were a little pricey and they only had one pair in my size in the entire store. (I know right now you're thinking, "She said this story would be about her husband, but all we're getting is more shopping news!" It's coming, I promise.) I was at work on Tuesday and I spilled some food on my jeans. I was really upset about this because I just did my laundry on Monday so it will be a while until I can do it again (we don't have a washer and dryer at our house yet). So yesterday I had to wear my old jeans. I was telling this to my husband and he asked, "How dirty are they?" I said, "As it turns out I only have two levels: clean and dirty." Apparently he has a whole spectrum of dirty, some of which are still acceptable to wear out in public. That story doesn't sound very funny written down, but I think it's funny.

PS.

When I came in to work today the girl that worked yesterday left the heat on. Not only that she left it all the way up to 80 degrees! I came in and I turned it down and I'm still roasting an hour later! Who leaved the heat on when nobody is in the building? Who heats a business up to 80 degrees? I just don't get it.

Grocery Shopping

I'm almost positive that this will be the most boring post I've ever written, but I wanted to know what others think about this topic. Grocery shopping is perhaps my very least favorite of activites. I am known to spend weeks just foraging through empty cupboards, inventing new dishes out of nothing until eventually I have to face the facts and go to the grocery store. This avoidance has been compounded with our current situation of being 30 minutes from the closest grocery store. In order to make sure I get everything we will need and also keep my time in the store to a minimum I make a two week eating schedule and then purchase only the ingredients that are on that list. Today at work I did the schedule and list on the computer. Now I feel like an obsessed, nerdy woman and walking around the store with my list might be too much for me. We'll have to see. My question is does anybody else hate to grocery shop? Does anyone else make a list of only the items that will be in the meals during the week? (I generally don't buy snack foods, not because I don't like to snack, or I don't want to spend the extra money, but because that would mean more time in the store.)

Mineral Deposits

In case any of you have encountered this problem I thought I'd share the small miracle of modern chemsitry that happened last night. I got a brand new maternity top from my mom a couple of weeks ago and decided to iron it before wearing it. It had come via UPS and was really wrinkled because it's 100% cotton. It took a while, but I was really excited because it is really cute and I'm tired of just looking fat rather than pregnant. As I was on the final section before finishing, my iron decided that would be the perfect time to leave a huge white streak across the front of the shirt. This is a mineral deposit that comes because I live in Utah and have very hard water. Also, I very rarely actually press the self-cleaning button on my iron. The stain showed up and I couldn't wear the shirt. I decided that I would wash it. Yesterday, when I was doing the washing I noticed it didn't come out in the wash. I sprayed it with shout (always my first course of action) and then put it back in the machine. No luck. So I did what any resourceful woman would do, I called my mom. She said to try vinegar. I tried vinegar on my shirt and rubbed the spot. Some of the stain came out, but you could still clearly see the streak. Just as I was about to give up hope on my new shirt that I had never been able to wear I decided to call my aunt. She told me to try Lime-Away. I was worried because this product clearly has marked on the label "Danger: Corrosive to skin and eyes." That doesn't sound like something you should be putting on your new shirt, but I was despirate. It makes sense too, if the prodcut can remove Lime deposits "from a variety of household surfaces" why not my shirt? So I put on the rubber gloves and sprayed away. Just like magic the stripe was gone! I then rinsed the shirt four or five times just to make sure all the Lime-Away was gone. So, if you're ever stuck in this situation, now you know.

Working with Incompetence

My job is easy and by easy I mean I can usually count on at least 2 hours a day with absolutely nothing to do. It is for that reason that I get so angry when I come in to work and the girls that have worked the day before me have left whole boxes of things that haven't been put away. Mostly their excuse is that they were too busy. I know that this is a lie. I know this because there is a program on our computer that shows how much sales were done the day before and also how much sales each associate has rung up and guess what, I'm the highest seller. If I'm the highest seller and my days are consistently more busy than the other days and I still have hours of free time then I know the other girls have plenty of time to get the job done. How annoying!

88 cents

**Warning** this post is completely about my shopping debacle yesterday.

This post will need a little background before the really crushing part will come. While growing up, since probably 9th grade, I have had to spend at least $70-100 on jeans. Some of you may not think that's a lot of money for a pair of jeans, but others may think I'm absolutely crazy. The reason that I have spent so much on jeans is that I'm tall and it seems almost impossible to find jeans that fit me and aren't 2-3 inches too short. My husband thinks it's still way too much for jeans (I never tell him how much my sister spends on jeans because he might have a heart attack) since he wears levis that cost approximately $30 and buys them only when they're on sale for under $20. Since living with him I haven't purchased a pair of jeans for myself. That's not to say I haven't gotten any new jeans, they've just been presents. Anyway, I was thinking that perhaps my husband is right and I'm just looking in the wrong places to find a pair of jeans that fit nice.

Jump to my present situation. I'm almost 18 weeks pregnant and I'm still wearing my size 6 pre-pregnancy jeans. This may sound absurd, but there are a few factors that have made this situation not so bad. Factor 1: they're gap jeans and I don't know if anyone else out there has experienced the phenomenon of the ever expanding gap jeans. The first wear out of the dryer is how they fit in the store for about 1 hour. After that they become pretty big. Before my pregnancy I wore belts to coutneract this, but now I don't need them. The pants just expand. Factor 2: they're a little low cut (not immodestly so, my tummy is always covered). This means that after expanding to full extent they can kinda go below the belly. Keep in mind that I am wearing maternity shirts so they cover that whole area anyway. This has been OK up until a little while ago that I noticed that trying to bend over to pick things up or lean forward when I'm sitting down is uncomfortable. I decided last week that I really should just bite the bullet and go purchase some pregnancy jeans.

Jean shopping has always been depressing for me because I try on about a billion jeans that fit great, but are too short or that are long enough, but way too big. Also my concern was that pregnancy clothing is a restricted category as it is so there wont be the selection I would like. I was thinking about how much I used to spend on jeans when I happened to see that JCPenny was having a buy one get the second for 88 cents sale on their maternity clothing. I decided for 88 cents I can at least go try. I went with my sister-in-law who is also pregnant. My excitement was actually building when going in because you have to have positive thinking when shopping. We tried on jeans and pants and shirts. NONE of them were long enough. In fact some of them were so short that my sister-in-law laughed when I came out of the dressing room. She found some really really cute jeans that fit her great. I decided to buy two shirts just so that the trip wasn't a bust. I guess I'm just stuck wearing my pre-prego jeans until I can figure something else out. At least this way nobody can say I didn't try.

Money Matters

My husband and I have a very similar idea about how money should be spent. Our philosophy on spending money is don't, unless you have to. That means that we both find no problem in paying for rent, utility bills, insurance, and groceries. It is just in other things that spending money comes into conflict. Let me clarify here the conflict is rarely with each other. In fact we both will think several days about something we want to spend money on before we even bring it up with the other person and then most times the other person agrees that the expense is reasonable. We both had this philosophy in varying degrees before we married so the transition has been a rather smooth one. I do not bring this up to tell everyone how great my husband and I work together or how responsible we are or anything of the sort. I bring it up because I didn't realize it until a couple of days ago.

I realized, with the help of family and friends, that since moving to Utah I have had absolutely no outlet for myself that is my own. My husband saved his graduation money and bought a membership to the local climbing gym that he goes to twice a week and gets to have alone time doing something he loves to do. I on the other hand never set up anything like that for myself. I realized last weekend perhaps one reason that my mother-in-law is so good at so many crafts and music things. Those were things that she could do by herself and for herself to get out of the house and the "mom" mode. (Not that I'm in the mom mode yet, but I think everyone needs time for themselves.) So I decided to go see if I could sign up for any classes. I had a problem with that since we just moved in the area I don't really know of any places that offer adult classes on, well, really anything. What the class teaches isn't really the point. Getting out of the house and meeting new people and doing something on my own is really the point. Also I realized that this wasn't really a need so spending money on it seemed like something I didn't really need to be doing. I went to the fabric store and they had a quilting class that I signed up for. Now we get back to the money subject. I've never committted to spending that much money without at least talking to my husband about it first. (Not that the class was that much money, but I need to buy the fabric to make the quilt and, well, fabric isn't cheap*.) I had a hard time doing it too, not because I hadn't talked to my husband, but because taking a quilting class isn't a need. Clearly it is just something I want to do so I stay sane, but I had decided that it was OK. That night when my husband came home I told him what I had done. I don't really know what I expected him to say or do but I was so pleasently surprised with his response! He said that he thought it was a good idea and that we would figure out how budget for the class and fabric. I also told him I was thinking it would be good if I talked to my OB about any prenatal fitness classes that I might be able to sign up for and he thought that was a great idea.

Don't I have a great husband? Maybe I was getting him worried with the ammount of crying I've been doing lately and he thinks, like I do, that these classes might help me stop crying. I'm not sure. What I am sure about is how much he values me. He wants me to be happy, even if it means that we have less for other things. He is so great!


*Also I need a sewing machine, rotary cutter, cutting board, and ruler for the class. I will need to borrow these from family as I don't own any of them. I hope I'm not imposing too much in that regard, but the idea of the class just made me so excited. Plus, it's only for a day and I hope to return everything in excellent condition.

Out of Control

I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling, but I still wanted to vent my frustration about it for a little while. I feel like my emotions are completely out of my control right now. Not only that, I feel like they are very volatile--if I'm happy then I'm the happiest I could ever be, if something happens that normally would irk me a little right now it seems like the biggest problem. Most frustrating of all is that I feel like it takes almost all of my energy not to cry at the weirdest moments in front of everyone. My worst fear is that I'm just going to break down in front of everyone and completely embarass myself and probably my hsuband at the same time. I just want to hide away right now until things calm down. Then I think that's silly since I figure the reason for this instability is my pregnancy and that's not really going away anytime soon. I can't just be a hermit and not live my life. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to run away from home for a week though? I could go somewhere and just relax and not worry about how I seem to anyone else. That's completely impractical right now though.

Two Great Books

When I went home I made a much needed visit to my favorite library. It has a seemingly endless supply of great books and the librarian knows me so well the books she suggests for me to read are always captivating. I've loved all but one of her suggestions during my reading history. This amazing librarian is my mother and the library is her personal library located in our basement. I recently finished two of the books I borrowed from her library and both were amazing.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was so great! It is a novel decidedly about women, but despite being in a foreign country during a foreign time I could easily draw similarites in my own life.

The Life of Pi is such an amazing story! I truly do recommend this book to everyone!

The only problem with the reading of these two books is now I want to talk to someone else who has read them and see what they think of them. There are so many questions I would like to talk about. Both had group discussion questions in the back of the book that sounded very much like topic questions for papers that high school seniors have to write. Regardless of that I would very much like to talk about some of them. For instance, do you think the narrator of the first book was the hero or the villan? How does what a society consider beautiful shape the people and how do the people in turn shape what the society thinks of as beautiful? Or for the Life of Pi I would like to know if people believe Pi's first story of what happened or the second story he told the investigators? What is the significance of the book being exactly 100 chapters? Does Pi's story make you believe in God? What do you make of the floating island?

Anyway, these books are great! You should read them. Then when you do you should tell me what you think!

A Muscle Spasm?

This morning as I was laying in bed I felt something. I would describe it as a muscle spasm. The only thing that makes this not a muscle spasm was that it was inside my stomach, where I've never had a muscle spasm before. I'm pretty sure you can't get muscle spasms inside of you anyway. I felt this little feeling all morning long and debated as to whether or not it was indeed a muscle spasm or my baby moving. It felt really rather high to be my baby in my mind. This feeling was about 3 inches above my belly button. I decided to call my mom and ask her and she said you don't get muscle spasms inside of you. So now I'm really excited that I felt my baby move for the first time today! Yeah!

Also today I bought new bras. I didn't realize how much larger I had gotten, but I did go up an entire cup size and when I put on the new one it was like a miracle had happened! Suddenly I wasn't being squeezed in! It feels great. My advice for anyone is when you think your getting bigger don't put off gettting a new bra. You will be much happier if you have a bra that fits.

I also have a new project that I'm super excited about. I can't say what it is because it's that time of the year when people can't know what you're getting them for Christmas! (Christmas is coming!)

My McGuyver

Well this weekend was great! I just wished we had more time to spend with everyone. Also we didn't get to say goodbye to Dan's dad. Our travel for this trip was a little out of the ordinary. We flew up Saturday morning (because Daniel had to work late Friday) and then drove my brother's Toyota Solara back to Utah to deliver it to my grandma, who purchased it from my brother. My grandma lives about 1.5 hours south of our house. Our original plan was that we drove our car down to her house Friday night and then left it there. When we would drop off the sports car on Sunday we would pick up our car and head north again to our house. Well, Sunday night came and Daniel didn't really want to add almost 4 hours to our trip. Since I didn't work Monday I told him we could stop at home for the night and then in the morning I could drive the car down to grandma's on my own. This genious plan (that my mom came up with) would make it so we got home at 8:30pm. So we called grandma and she said it was ok. Everything worked out well until we were walking to the front door of our home when I asked him, "Do you have my car keys with the house key on it?" He replied, "No I left those in our car at Grandma's." This posed a problem since I had locked our trailor before leaving on Friday. So we were locked out. Luckily my handy husband had brought all his tools down from home to be able to do some odd jobs for some people here. We found an old flashlight and to our surprise when we turned it on there was a weak yellow glow! After trying every window and realizing that I had also done a very good job at locking all of them we went up to the front door. We tried many tactics but the one that worked was when Daniel took the pins out of the hinges and then pushed it as far away from the latch side and used an alan wrench to jimmy the lock open! It was truly amazing! Now we know that if someone really wanted to get into our trailor a locked door really wouldn't stop them. We also found out that our neighbors really wouldn't stop them either. (They didn't even look out the windows at us.)