12 Weeks and growing

I turned 12 weeks pregnant this Tuesday. My baby in my belly (so reminds me off Fat Bastard from Austin Powers) is now 2 inches big and my OBGYN should now be able to feel my fundus. Sounds like something good doesn't it? FUN-dus. Nope, it is just the top of my uterus. 

Gee whiz it is so much fun being pregnant: the sour stomach, the slow digestion effects, getting up to pee in the middle of the night, the deterioration of normal brain activity, and now the constriction of clothes that were once comfortable.

I am embarrassed to say that I had to change my normal jeans and opt for the expandable maternity jeans that are made out of super stretch denim and have the WWE stretchy band at the top. Oh, so sexy I feel. Not to mention the fact that as I was writing this I realized that my shirt was on inside out. Thanks for depleting my brain activity so much that I did not notice that I put my shirt on inside out, baby. I go out of the house with my shirt inside out and thankfully was wearing a jacket. The jeans are a bit large, but I do not feel like there is an anaconda around my waste.

So many more weeks to look forward to...

Winter Snow warning creates gym frenzy

WTF! Can I tell you just how much I love those three letters, because they are so useful and keep me from dropping the literal f-bomb. 

It has been raining non-stop since Friday and yesterday the warning was out for a bunch of snow. What happens in the lovely South, since we do not have plows and those big salt igloos (I noticed them on my trip to Michigan this year), people will first run to the grocery and by milk, bread, and chili ingredients. Then after the fridge and pantry is stocked the schools out of fear of harming children will shut down the schools without actually seeing a snow flurry in their area. 

It snows in this area once every couple of years and it hardly is anything to fart about. So, they shut down Columbia County Schools, which means that Boden's daycare is shut down, which means that I cannot go to work, and I'm home and it is a beautiful sunny, snowless, cold day. Ladies and gentlemen we got not a single flurry last night as the news predicted and the schools were closed for no apparent reason. Way to go! Ppprrrt!

I do not want to stay inside and rot any longer. We have been inside since Friday, because of non-stop I think I want to start collecting a male and female of every animal type rain. Boden and I go to the gym. This not unusual occurrence for us. 

Let me just preface that I go to the gym, because it makes me feel good mentally and physically and it allows me to eat larger portions of food. I encourage everyone to be healthy. 

However, WTF are all these people doing at the gym at this hour of the day? It is cold and school is cancelled, so you come to the gym at a different time. Sigh.... Not even the cool kids after school room with that dancing game is open then and your kids do not want to hang out with the babies and toddlers. You should have seen all those kids in the nursery. I felt sorry for the ladies watching all those ankle biters. The whole gym was a zoo. I even considered starting back at 6am with the business crowd. (Yes, I used to go to the gym that early.)

It really ticked me off. Kind of like the mad rush in January of new gym members. I just want to scream out to them that "75% of ya'll are going to quit," but since I'm not one of the six o'clocker's anymore and don't have to wait on the showers and hairdryers in order to get my ass to work isn't priority, I chilled out a bit.

I almost turned around when I found out that the drink machine was broken and waiting on a part. Sigh, I deliberately raided my husband's change jar just so I could buy my Dasani. 

Poopy Night Out

This story comes at the expense of my husband, but it is not intended to make fun of him at all. The situation is funny. Poop humor is too good to pass up and now that I'm getting my energy back my creativity is also returning a bit. 

Brian, Boden, and I decide to go eat tacos at a local Mexican restaurant. There is a wait. Fortunately, this older gentleman offered me his seat next to his lovely wife. I wouldn't ordinarily take the seat, but I was tired, hungry, and pregnant.

I am enjoying a nice conversation with the gentleman and his wife and Brian takes Boden outside to keep him occupied and to prevent him from annoying the other patrons. (He really isn't that annoying. He was annoying me mostly.) Brian storms back into the waiting area and asks for Boden's bag. I think nothing of it. He obviously is fully confident about handling whatever situation is occurring and I hand him the bag.

Finally, the "your table is ready thingee" vibrates and lights up and Brian is nowhere to be seen, so I follow the hostess to our table and try to call Brian on his cell phone. No answer. Okay, I'll wait.

Brian comes in with Boden and flings the bag on the table and storms off. My pregnancy is making me pee, so maybe he really had to go. I thought he was being a bit rude not to help Boden into the high chair, but I let it go. I could feel something was amiss.

I order some drinks and Brian returns from the bathroom. I don't want to recount all of it, but here are some excerpts which lasted for the first half of dinner and then went away after the first half of his margarita:

"There was shit everywhere."

"There were only four wipes."

"It was like clay. I tried to wipe it and it would only smear."

"The truck now smells like shit."

"It got on my hands and I don't even know how."

In Brian's defense, he has changed many poopy diapers. However, you know you have skills when you wake up in the middle of the night, don't put on your Coke-Bottle glasses (I am probably legally blind without contacts or glasses), don't turn on any lights, and change a diaper in no time. Yes, I can brag about diaper changing skills... it doesn't go on the resume though, but it should.

I feel for him, but have been thrown up on even in my mouth, pooped on, peed on, and God knows what. All I could say is that it only gives him that much more experience. Now he has learned that you rip the sides of the pull-up, they have changing tables in the bathroom (the bathroom would also be illuminated by lights), and he can always ask me for help.

I want to go to there

If you have been reading or personally know me, then you know that my husband has gone to the southern hemisphere on a work trip to South Africa. Since I'm pregnant, I'm not bothered that I'm missing out on potentially contracting malaria or being away from Boden for 10 days. I'm extremely jealous of summer. We haven't been on a vacation in two years and I'm getting beach fever. In particular, I'm yearning for the most relaxing vacation I've ever enjoyed in the Abaco Islands. 

You can do a little work on the island or rather in a boat doing some fishing. This is a picture that I found of some random people who went fishing with the same guide, Robert Lowe, but the fish look like the ones our guys caught. We're talking a plethora of big ass fish is what they brought back. 

This is me and my friend Stacy on our rented boat enjoying the beautiful day. 

Tahiti Beach I really want to go to there. This is just the sweetest beach I've ever been to in my whole entire life. It was like swimming in bath water with clear aqua waters and white beaches. There aren't big waves. It is just a place to loll about and do jack shit. You can park your boat and just jump into the water. It is shallow for a while and if you are brave you can swim out and snorkel. I'm good on the beach.

This is a photo of Captain Jacks. We played trivia there hoping to win our tab. No luck, but the Kalik beer and food was awesome. There were many other yummy places to eat that you could get to by boat, golf cart, or foot. I could not get enough of the grouper sandwiches and conch fritters. What is really cool about the area is that the party goes from place to place each night, so there is always something. You can even go to Sunday brunch at Nippers. This place had some of the best BBQ that I've ever stuck in my mouth and the best people watching: thongs, banana hammocks, and some stuff you would see on Spring Break. 

I'm going to zone out now and pretend that I'm at our rental house, The Calypso.

Valentine's Day

Brian has been in South Africa for over a week and isn't due back until Monday. Boden is sick of hanging out with me and me him. I love him to pieces, but there is a distinctive generational difference. The fact that he has rules that I place on him also drives a small wedge, but thank God he has a short attention span. I am on and off feeling sick and it makes me tear up when Boden says that he's lost his Daddy.

Oh, but it was Valentine's Day. A very special day of love and I'm beginning to believe that it is just another day for the retail sector to make money off the suckers, but I suppose we should be reminded of all the people in our lives who give us love and help us to love others. 

I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to first have breakfast with my father and his wife Debbie at the Cracker Barrel. Pregnancy aside, I love to eat. I also later had dinner or most of it with my good friend, Ashley and her daughter Eva. I say most of it because the kitchen was backed up and we had to ask for our dinner to go, because our children were having meltdowns and scaring the couples who were trying to have a romantic dinner. We wouldn't want to scare the in love couples out of having sex later on. It just wouldn't be fair. 

It was just nice enough to hear, "Happy Valentine's Day, Mommy."

9 Weeks

My baby is the size of a grape and about an inch long. Fingers, toes, and all the other parts are formed and becoming more distinctive.  Only 31 more weeks.

A friend described pregnancy as being similar to being abducted by an alien and I tend to agree with this theory. There is a range of new powers to ones being that only occurs while your are sharing your body with another human. One of my new powers is the ability to acutely taste and smell things. If I could drink this would be quite useful with wine, but wine tastes like ethanol right now, so no future as a Sommelier for me. I did notice that Boden's juice smelled more like pear juice and that was a turn off until I got desperate and poured myself a glass. It was good and had this kind of floury type of taste like bananas have. The ingredients: apple, pear, and banana. It turned out to be pretty good juice. How can I market this?

The other weird thing about this stage of pregnancy is the lack of ability to eat like the pig that I am. Everyone has this impression that pregnant women have the ability to eat like a competitive eater and right now it is furtherest from the truth. I can eat a handful of pretzels and feel absolutely miserable, however if I don't eat every two to three hours I feel nauseous. I'm eagerly awaiting second trimester just to get back to eating like a pig.

The good news is that I haven't come across a food aversion yet. There is still time, but I'm hopeful that if I just eat bland I will be okay. The last time I could see spinach in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store and my mouth would water in anticipation of vomiting.

Boden does not know that his world will be shared with a new addition. He is dealing with me and my lack of energy and talks about going to school. I feel pretty guilty about the whole situation. He is still sweet. He told me the other day that he was a big boy and then said I was big too. Thanks, son.

2009 Grammys

With the battery of negative news, I turned my attention to being entertained by some of the best musicians and singers and watched the 2009 Grammy Awards. I loved it all from Coldplay to Stevie Wonder. I loved watching Paul McCartney belting out "Sweet Caroline" during Neal Diamond's performance. It was all so good in every genre. Everything about the evening was purely entertaining until Neil Portnow's political proclamation. We get it! You love Obama. Play the effing music white boy or get off the stage! I want to see Justin Timberlake, damn it!

So, I think I walked away with a couple things that just really stuck out in my mind. The first was the very pregnant and Swaggerin' MIA. It could be once you are pregnant you get pregdar and notice every pregnant person. I was absolutely fascinated that she was out there trying to shake her bootie looking like she's been caught steeling and what the hell has she got on? The polka dot and sheer ensemble was like a very gone wrong Minnie Mouse outfit. 

Pregnant women are beautiful even if they get huge, but why polka dots on the boobs, belly, and butt? All those other guys are wearing tuxedos and MIA is... I don't know who put that on her. Maybe we can blame hormones. Never mind the guys, she was absolutely fascinating to me. Thank God she at least had sneakers on... I don't know why we pregnant women worry so much about the well-being of other pregnant women, but it could be the hormones.

These thoughts weren't just mine, because I swear at the end of their performance Chris Martin from Cold Play was on the edge of his seat and pointed at her and said something about her being so pregnant and doing that performance. 

The next probably isn't that surprising, but is Kayne sporting a black man mullet or did he let his mohawk grow out? Maybe I notice hair a lot or something, but it was like he is throwing a little too much into the 80s craze. I couldn't get a good photo from the Grammy's, but this is one from a radio gig he did recently. 

"Billy D! Billy D!"