Staying Busy At Home

I went from being surrounded by 9 2-year-olds all day, to not leaving the house and even at home not being allowed to do anything that keeps me on my feet.

No exercising (even walking), no cooking that I have to stand for more than a few minutes for (microwave is about it), no carrying anything (which means no organizing the house for the new baby), no running errands, etc.

I sit on the couch or lay in bed all day, and this is how I stay spend my days.

1. Reading
     - Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

     - Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater

     - Little Women (need to finish by 12/6)

     - The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (need to finish by 12/31)

2. Surfing the Web
     - how to prepare for your new baby
     - preterm birth studies and statistics
     - Facebook
     - find traditions I want to incorporate into our family
     - health insurance stuff
     - baby products
     - finding recipes for when I can cook again
     - Pinterest
3. Creating a Baby Registry on Babyli.st
4. Taking a Free online Photography course
5. Keeping a Pregnancy Journal
6. Watching TV/Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu Plus
7. Blogging (as of today-we'll see how long it lasts)
8. I plan on starting to practice playing the piano again

All in all, I’m staying busy, without ever feeling like I’m actually accomplishing anything with my days.

Tomorrow Scott's out of town for work, which means trying to fill up from when I wake up Thursday morning until my Dr. appointment late Friday afternoon with stuff I can do to make me miss Scott a little less. Hopefully this list will continue to keep me busy until I'm allowed to leave the house again! 

Any suggestions you may have to keep me busy are very much appreciated! 

Hopeless Romantic

I wrote this over a year ago and just saw it when I finally logged back into my account. I added a sentence or two, but I definitely am still grateful for this man of mine, so I thought I'd share.

So, whether I want to admit it or not, I am a hopeless romantic. I live for the opportunity to get a love letter and flowers for no reason, to slow dance in the middle of an empty street, to be taken on a surprise date. I love surprises. I love cheesy love stories. I love holding hands at every moment it is physically possible. I love candle lit dinners and star gazing. I love seeing elderly people holding hands. I love cuddling. I love dressing up for dates.

I think it was the result of growing up watching chick flicks all the time. They may have become what I thought real life was like. Adding to it, when you're dating, those types of things tend to happen quite often because guys are trying to impress you on an almost constant basis. 

When I married Scott, I knew I wasn't marrying a hopeless romantic. I knew I wasn't marrying a macho man either, so I thought the balance would be good. He would keep me grounded in reality instead of drifting away into the magical land where love is all you need, yet he would be thoughtful enough to watch chick flicks with me, cuddle, and never forget an anniversary or birthday... For me to still be woo-ed from time to time. 

I have tried to make Scott be a hopeless romantic... Tried to get him to write me love letters, tried to have him keep a "couple's journal"with me. Made an "I Love You Because..." erasable frame so that we would write specific things we loved about each other on a daily basis, among many others attempts. Let me tell you, it doesn't work. But did I really think it would?? 

However, I realized that he has always done romantic things, but I was too worried about it being just like the movies and I missed it. He has been a "romantic" since the day I met him, but just not always in the way I was looking for.

So, I decided to make a list of some of the things I remember him doing that meant so much to me, made me feel like the girl in any chick flick. 

1. Came home from class one day and he had printed a bunch of our engagement pictures, framed them, and put them up in our apartment. 

2. Got me flowers and left a note with them in the bathroom so I'd see them when I woke up telling me he hadn't wanted to wake me so he got me these instead when he was sick and couldn't sleep.

3. Came home from work to flowers and a baguette from my favorite French bakery for absolutely no reason but to let me know he was thinking about me while I was away. 

4. Sent me a package when I was visiting my family in France before we got engaged. It included a mixed CD for our next road trip, a bracelet he made for me, a framed picture of us from a month before and a letter. 

5. Came home from work to a home made dinner with Sparkling Apple Cider and candles for no reason what-so-ever. 

6. Stopped me and had me run over to him so that he could slow dance with me on the water front to the music that was playing through the restaurant's speakers. 

7. Surprised me with a hotel stay on a random Friday night. He brought our BluRay player and the movie we were watching when he held my hand for the first time (Yes Man) and sparkling apple cider. I had NO clue we were staying there until he handed me the room key at the hotel. 

8. Brought me tea in bed when I was sick on our moving trip to Seattle

9. Sang to me while star gazing 

10. Asks me to cuddle with him any time he can tell I'm upset or sad about anything.

11. Played the song from our wedding and danced with me in the living room.
12. Picked me up from work with a package from Barney's on the seat (There's no Barney's in Seattle). When I opened it, there was a note that said, "A gift so you never forget our trip to Chicago. Love you to Lake Michigan and back! Scott" I opened it to find a bottle of lotion that I LOVE from our stay at the Park Hyatt in Chicago a year earlier.

I sure did get a great guy, and am so excited to see him teach our son what it means to be a real man. 

The Surprises of Pregnancy

Well pregnancy has been different than either of us expected.

Here are some of the things we were right-on in expecting:

1. I would gain ridiculous amounts of weight and have to be ok with it
     - so far 11lbs
2. We would get so excited to feel our baby move
     - we take time out every single day to just sit and feel him move together
3. We would be happy with a girl or a boy
     - we were convinced it was a girl...we were SURE of it. It's a boy, and we still couldn't be happier
4. I wouldn't feel great the first couple months
     - was sick on a daily basis, and had to force myself to eat anything for the first few months

Here are some of the things we were completely wrong about:

1. We would have 9 months to do everything we wanted to before the baby came
      - I was too sick to do anything besides work the first 13 weeks
      - I was restricted in what I could do after 21 weeks because of threatening pre-term labor
           - that left us with 8 weeks, at which time we were planning things for a later time in the                           pregnancy which we had to cancel
2. I would be able to keep working until a few weeks before the baby came
     - had to quit just before 23 weeks
3. I would eat healthy to keep our baby healthy and make him more likely to enjoy healthy foods
     - I've never eaten more grilled cheeses, starches, butter, cheese, and ice cream in my life
     - during the months of nausea, kale made me throw up every time I ate it, now if I can taste it in             something, I literally get sick to my stomach
     - I do still try to eat healthy, but I definitely give into temptation more often than not
4. We would go on a "Babymoon"
     - traveling is out of the question because of my "high-risk" pregnancy
5. I would continue to exercise through my pregnancy
     - hahahah... even when I was allowed to, exercising was the last thing from my mind, I was way             too tired, all the time. Unless walking at a 1-2 mph pace with 9 toddlers in tow counts. In that             case I exercised up until just shy of 23 weeks.
6. We would plan on having the baby near his due date. (+/- 2 weeks)
     - my new plan is to expect him about 4 weeks early, but be ready for him at any time (whether a                 week from now or a week after his due date).
7. We would have a small-average sized baby (I was somewhere between 5 and 5.5 lbs and Scott was     7lbs11oz)
     - yes we can't know this yet...if he comes early, he will obviously be small, but his ultrasounds               show he is growing in the 81-84%
          - that means that if he continues to grow at the pace he has been and goes full term, he's                          estimated to weigh around 9 lbs!
          - yes, I know it's just an estimate and can be off by a lot
8. We would see our baby twice before he is born
     - we have already seen him 6 times that I can remember and have 2 more ultrasounds scheduled in        the next few weeks.
9. We would have to wait until he was born to know our baby
     - he is super active (every single ultrasound tech has mentioned this to us)
     - he is stubborn (took an hour to convince him to turn so we could see his heart and an extra Dr             and about 20 minutes to let them do the amnio to check for infection because he would move to           where they were going to do it every time they found a spot).
     - he loves his dad (he seems to sleep a lot while Scott's away and wakes up to "play" when Scott's           home.
     - he sucks his thumb
10. I would know when I was having contractions
     - I'd been having them for weeks before someone explained it to me and I was able to recognize             them as contractions, though I found out I was also having "silent contractions" that I couldn't             feel no matter how much I tried to pay attention to what was going on with my body.
11. I'd start feeling him move around 20 weeks
     - I was able to feel him around 12/13 weeks, though his movements definitely got easier to                    recognize later.
          - I'm assuming this is because of how much he moves and how big he is

I'm sure there are many more, and more will come up as I progress in the pregnancy, but as you can tell, we had no idea what we were in for! Probably just like we have no idea what we're in for when he comes to join our family.

Upgrading our home

In the past few months, we have made a few upgrades to our home. We rent an apartment, so they weren't things to the place itself, it was more upgrading our stuff. A month ago, we made some upgrades to our bed room. 

We finally got bed side tables 

(I'd been waiting over 2 years so it was a big deal)

We got a new duvet cover and new decorative pillows

(the pillows were bought after this picture was taken)

And attached a dimmable light strip to the back of our headboard

(instead of bed side lamps; we got the idea from our hotel in Vancouver)

And we also added a piece of "furniture" to our living room. 

I got a piano :D happiest day of my life- not really, but it was up there

(Unfortunately it can't be centered because our hall starts right after that and we wouldn't be able to get through)

Next upgrade will be new couches... We'll see when that happens.

Travels

Those of you who know Scott and I, may know that we LOVE to travel. We find any excuse to go somewhere. We love to explore together, and frankly, we get a little tired of being in one place for too long, even when it's somewhere as amazing at Seattle. We also know that once we have kids, it will be 10 100 times more difficult to travel where and when we'd like. So we are taking advantage of these years without kids to travel as much as we can. 

Fortunately, I work for a family who lets me take time off any time I need, and Scott has breaks from school every few months and a good amount of vacation time at work. 

So far our trips for this year have taken us here: 

Vancouver, B.C. 

(view from Stanley Park)

Salt Lake City, UT 

(view from our hotel room)

Fortunately, we have 3 trips already planned, and many more ideas in our minds. 

Our next trip (this weekend or next)

Portland, OR

In April, we will be going 

New York City, NY

In August, we will be going 

on this boat

(yes those are water slides on top)

we will be leaving from 

Long Beach, CA

and going to Mexico. 

I can't wait for our trips this year, they are so exciting.

I've decided to start making "yearbooks" for Scott and I so that we have all our pictures from the year in one place and we can remember when we went on what trips. 

I better start taking more pictures! 

Date Night

Scott and I thought we'd make this Saturday night's date extra special. We got all dressed up, and I wore my new dress (from Anthropolgie) with black pattern tights and silver heels (from mormon prom).

We went to bin on the lake (thanks to the awesome family I work for) and ate incredible food. Every single bite was amazing. 

We started out with all 3 types of Charcuterie, the country pate with quince was both of our favorites. I got the seared scallops (my first time ever having scallops) and they just melted in my mouth. Scott got the hanger steak, and it to was cooked to perfection. We got the Brussels sprouts to share on the side and were both amazed (I usually hate Brussels sprouts). And we finished off with a apple galette with ginger ice cream and cognac caramel. 

Scott really wanted to go to a casino after dinner, so we drove to Snoqualmie casino 

got $5 each, played until we ran out (didn't take me long at all) and our eyes started stinging from all the people smoking then headed home. It was such a fun night and the latest night we've had in a long time (we've been in bed by 9:30 lately and we didn't get home till midnight!) . I love dating my husband.

Oh ya, and Scott took me to a few stores to look for a piano. Unfortunately they are on back order everywhere, so I don't know when I'll get it, but I'm pretty thrilled for it to get here!

(I do still need to buy a bench and some good head phones)

Piano Obsession

Life has been wonderful. I have started playing piano again. A friend in the ward is giving me piano lessons, to fill in the many gaps I have in my piano knowledge, in exchange for babysitting her awesome kids...total win-win! Now I'm just dying to get a piano in our little apartment so I'm not driving to the church almost every day of the week and hanging out in a dark empty church building for 3+ hours a week.

This is the one I wish I could get:

It's a Yamaha NU1 Hybrid, it works just like an acoustic piano mechanically. It has the same keys used in Yamaha's acoustic pianos but the sound is from digital samples taken from their concert grands. Unfortunately, it weighs 240lbs, making all our future moves much more complicated, and it costs well over $5,000. So....

This is the realistic one I'm looking at for the moment. 

It's a Casio PX-750, an 8th of the price, easily moveable, and still feels much more like an acoustic piano than most "digital" pianos (at least at this price-point). 

I'm also going to need to get a good set of headphones so Scott is still able to do homework in our home after I get it. And so he doesn't realize how long I practice the same thing before it sounds the way it does when I play it for him.

Anyone want to buy these for me as an early birthday present??