At Least I'm Not Working

I'm off today through Monday, but there's little relaxing to be had. Today I ran some errands in the morning and then went to Becky's around 4 (after stopping by the grocery store to pick up some sale soda and ice cream for her). We went to another grocery store to buy what she needs for Claire's birthday party on Sunday. Tomorrow I'll be back over there at 11 to cook for the party. She requested that I make my meatballs, mac & cheese, Chipperelli's salad and peanut butter/chocolate bars.

When I get home from there tomorrow, I have a little more baking to do because we're going to Ed's parents' other home after Claire's party on Sunday. Monday is my MIL's birthday, so I'm going to make her a carrot cake (her favorite...yuck) and something else for my FIL. Not sure what...it depends on my mood and how sick of baking I am. Plus I promised Ed a nice dinner since I've been slacking in that department lately. Although it's not entirely my fault because he's been gone a lot of nights between work, playing softball and umpiring. It's always something. I'm not cooking or baking anything on Sunday or Monday...darnit!

We'll be back Monday night, just in time to go to bed for work on Tuesday. Then we have our hospital tour on Wednesday morning, followed by my doctor's appointment. I'm already tired just thinking about this long weekend. Good thing I didn't wind up on bedrest!

Claire's First Birthday
A Photo Retrospective

Opening Presents

Checking out her tunnel

Hamming it up in the tunnel

Trying the cake

Discovering she likes icing...a lot

Hey...why haven't you ever given this to me before?

2 Days, 2 Appointments

So apparently I lied about the ultrasound pictures. They didn't give me a single one. How rude. In all fairness, the baby was being very stubborn and she couldn't really get any good shots anyway. She was able to guesstimate that my little butterball is about 5 lbs 1 oz. With a big ol' head...just like her mama. ;)

Today was my doctor's appointment. Happily, my blood pressure is down. Woohoo! He still wants to see me every week from now on just to monitor. Better to be safe than sorry.

Yesterday was the Claire Bear's first birthday. After my ultrasound, my mom, Ed and I had dinner then went to Becky's. Claire was in rare form and seemed to find everything hysterically funny. Especially the tunnel that Becky and Scott bought her. Very fun and very cute. Ed and I gave her a little table and chairs set for her playroom. You should see this playroom...it's adorable. They painted the walls a pretty light blue and Becky and her MIL are adding these really pretty decals to the walls (big trees, clouds, butterflies). It looks great. Then we sang happy birthday and Claire had her first cake experience. She's a big fan of icing. ;) I'll post pictures as soon as Becky sends me some.

Ow!

I thought I had managed to avoid it, but today I got my first case of pregnancy acid reflux. And it sucks. I guess I'm going to have to cut out my beloved orange juice for awhile, huh? And I'm pretty sure that eating dinner after 9 last night didn't help either. Oh well, what can you do? It's all a part of the joy of pregnancy.

As for the weekend, dinner with the girls on Saturday was lots of fun. Kathy took pictures, so after she gets back from the beach maybe she'll send them to me so I can post one or two. ;) The unexpected thunderstorm from hell afterwards wasn't too thrilling, but that's life. Yesterday was exhausting...I had a large author event and had to do a little more than I had hoped to get ready for it. At least we had an extra closing manager who was awesome enough to help me break it down, so I only went home a half-hour late. I was totally wiped though and wound up falling asleep for three hours...hence the very late dinner. Today was Monday. Enough said.

It has been exciting to obsessively check my baby registry recently...things are starting to move. Woohoo! :) Less than two weeks until the big shower and then my work shower is a week after that. Good times I tell you! This weekend is my Claire Bear's birthday party (tomorrow is her birthday), so I have to finalize with Becky what I'm making and where I'm making it at.

Tomorrow is my second ultrasound...so I'll have fun pictures to post for tomorrow night. Don't forget to check in. :)

Why Do We Even Bother?

Going to the Orioles game that is. It's just a big bummer almost every time. Plus, I had to walk in the heat and sit in the heat and just be in the heat. I'm not digging the heat...I would rather have it rainy and humid and cool like it was in the beginning of the week than hot. But, alas, the summer has returned for awhile. I know I'm supposed to be taking it easy this week, but Ed bought the baseball tickets well before he knocked me up and we didn't want to waste the money. Yesterday was our 9-year "dating anniversary," so we always go on a date on that day and thus, to the O's game we went. We know we're cheesy, but we don't care. ;) The bullpen blew it as usual and we didn't even stay until the end because we were both exhausted and just wanted to go home and sleep. It sucks to get old.

Had a fun work week at least. I went to a bunch of local schools, including my high school yesterday where I saw my favorite teacher. I think she's just about the only teacher I remember who still teaches there, but she was my favorite and I'm always happy to see her when I stop by. She remembers me too, which makes me very happy. She ran out to the lobby when they announced I was there to give me a hug. She almost died when she saw I was pregnant and asked how old I was. She didn't want to believe the answer and started going on about how she remembers me sitting in her classroom like it was yesterday. She asked who I was still friends with from high school. I know most of you didn't have her, but she remembers Kathy and Val (from you being a teacher's assistant and hanging in the English Dept. office). So that was fun. I also went to my elementary school, but there's nobody left from way back when there. Not really too shocking when you consider that it's been almost twenty years since I was there. I'm old.

Going out to dinner tonight. Looking forward to that. I was going to go to a wedding celebration afterwards, but I decided that I really need to relax a little since I have to work tomorrow. It's for a friend from work who got married in Vegas. They're having a big shindig at his MIL's. It should be a lot of fun, but not for me. :( Oh well, there'll be other parties.

Staying Stress-Free

Had a doctor's appointment today. My blood pressure was apparently fairly high when I got there, which caused my doctor some alarm. He had the nurse retake it with me lying on my side. It was normal then, but he still wants me to come back in a week so he can monitor the situation. Good times. I've got to try to take it easy this week so that I don't wind up on bed rest next Wednesday. That would be bad...I have way too much at work I still need to deal with and line-up before I can leave. We'll see what happens next week, I guess.

He also gave me the referral for a second ultrasound. I scheduled the appointment for next Tuesday (Claire's first birthday!) after work. Hopefully Ed won't have anything else scheduled, but if it's a choice between making money and coming with me, I vote for him to make the money. My mom's coming too, so I'll have somebody there in case he can't be. He said that it should be fine though. :) Afterwards we can go bug Becky and see Claire on her big day. That'll be fun.

Speaking of Claire, I spent my first day of trying to relax babysitting. It was fun though...I just took her down to her playroom, shut the door and let her go to town. I was only alone with her for less than an hour, so it was a piece of cake. I even got to read a couple of really boring books about 20 times each. Good times, I tell you. ;)

I Must Finally Look Pregnant!

I've been visiting schools for work this week and at all three of the schools I've gone to so far, one of the secretaries has recognized that I'm pregnant. Hooray! :) I love school secretaries. I have to admit that I was in the bathroom at work yesterday and looked in the mirror and did a double take when I saw my belly. I must have popped a little in the past few days. I'm just happy to finally be looking pregnant to strangers. Weird obsession, I know, but there it is. ;)

BTW...I found the camera! Yay! It was in a random box of stuff at the bottom of the stairs to the office. Must have thrown it in there in one of our cleaning frenzies. One less thing to worry about. :)

On My Own...As Usual

Trying to keep myself amused as Ed has to go to bed early again tonight (he has to wake up at 4). I'm sleepy, but not sleepy enough to actually fall asleep yet, so on the computer I am. Now I have to make sure I'm absolutely dead tired before I can go downstairs to bed because unless I'm dead tired, I can't fall asleep without the television on. But I don't want to turn it on if Ed's sleeping. Make sense? Well, it does to me. :)

In other news, we can't find our camera. Not good...it was expensive and we can't afford to buy another one and I need a camera for when the baby gets here. The last time either of us remembers seeing it was when we went to his parents' other house. We're also missing a bottle of spray sunscreen that we were trying to find a couple weeks ago that we know we had there too. Maybe we had them both in a bag and left it there. I sure hope so because it will really suck if we lost that camera. :( We're going back there after Claire's birthday party in a couple of weeks, so I'm praying we'll find it then. Blah.

Gonna go play some POGO to waste time. Hopefully I'll reach the dead tired stage soon.

Why is it...

that I can never wear a white shirt without spilling something on it? Ever? Just wondering...

Good Day Gone Bad

So yesterday started out as a lovely Saturday. Ed and I did some cleaning and other household chores while getting to relax a little. We were supposed to meet Val and Don over my mom's at 4 so that Don (much to his dismay) could help Ed load up the changing table/dresser into Ed's car. We were running a little late, but so was everyone else...even my mother who was coming from a surprise retirement party in Canton. Not having brought my keys, I had to wait in the car with Ed until my mom finally got home. Val and Don arrived not too long afterwards and my mom, Val, Jordan and I had a lovely visit while Ed and Don loaded up the truck.

We then stopped over my sister's so that everyone could see her beautiful new house and so Ed could hang a book-rack up in Claire's room. Had another lovely visit there and got to play with my Claire Bear (who was none-too-pleased with Becky while she was holding Jordan...she better get used to it because I'm pretty sure my sister will want to hold her niece every so often once she's born...it was cute though). Ed is now all about their new neighborhood and insists that we will have a house there one day. No worries Becky...I'm sure that day is a long, long, long way aways. ;)

Then it was back to my house because we were all starving and I had a yummy dinner planned. That's where the evening turned bad. I was making packet potatoes and chicken on the grill. The chicken had been marinating since Friday night and I prepped the potatoes and threw them on the grill. When it was time to turn them over, I went out to discover that the fire was out and the propane tank was empty. Ed went to the shed to get another tank to discover that his spare two, one of which he swore was full, were both empty.

Although rather irritated, he decided to run out to fill one of the tanks. We usually fill the tanks at BJ's, but our BJ's membership was expired and we were holding off renewing until absolutely necessary, so he tried the gas station down the street. He came back less than ten minutes later and tried to hook up the new tank (they traded his empty for a full one), to find that the new tank was "empty." Now, he was mad. He went back to the gas station, but they were out of propane and couldn't fill the tank. They refunded his money and he tried three more places. Everyone was out of propane...I didn't even know there was a shortage at the moment. Now really pissed, he decided to just go to BJ's, renew the membership and get it filled there. He had to wait in line for over 10 minutes and when he finally got outside to get his tank filled, he discovered that the gas station had given him a broken tank that couldn't be filled. You can just imagine what that did to his mood. He had to wait in line (again) at customer service for a refund and then just came home.

At this point, Val, Don and I were starving and tired of waiting. Val and Don stuck around long enough for Don to help Ed unload the changing table and then they hightailed it out of my neighborhood. I think Ed was a little hurt that they left (although, quite frankly, I would have left too) and remained in a crappy mood for the rest of the night. It was good times, I tell you. Oh well, shit happens, life goes on. At least I have my changing table now! :)

Go Baby!

I just noticed that my ticker moved up another picture. Woohoo! :)

Same Old, Same Old

Not too much going on the past couple of days. My poor husband has been running on very little sleep as he keeps getting scheduled early morning D.C. shifts. He had to be there at 6:30 am on Monday, 4:30 this morning and 6:00 tomorrow morning. Not fun for him, but he's signing up at least one person a day, so he's making money. Making money is good.

My sister is now in her house. I got to check it out today and it's beautiful. Beautiful and huge...I can fit all three floors of my house into her main level. Perhaps one day Ed and I will be able to afford such a house...but not anytime soon. Luckily I love my little house, so it's all good...at least until we have a second baby and then it will definitely be tight. I'm going to have to break into Becky's house one day to take a bath in her huge tub complete with jets. I haven't been able to take a bath in over six years...my tub is so small that it's just too uncomfortable to try to soak and relax in there. Which sucks because I always loved to soak in the tub.

After Becky's, I went to my first Pampered Chef meeting since March or April...I can't remember which. Either way, it's been awhile. I've been such a slacker with the PC stuff that I just hadn't bothered to show up. Actually, in the beginning I was too tired to go, but now I have no excuse. Everyone was glad to see me and kept telling me how great I look...which is definitely good for the old self-esteem. ;) To keep my status, I just have to turn in one show every other month, so that's basically what I've been doing. Once I have the baby and things get settled, I'll have to get back into it. I do enjoy it and I miss getting the free stuff. So be warned, if you haven't done a show with me ever or in awhile, I will be bugging you once the new year hits. Erin, that means you! ;)

Revenge of the Ducks

It feels like my upstairs threw up Aflac. Everywhere you look, it's Aflac crap. Ed even got another desk for up here so he has work space and we don't have to fight over him hogging up the computer desk. He's a little obsessed with organizer things too, but I guess he does need them. He even found a nice 24-slot "literature organizer" for all his pamphlets and such...which is currently full and sitting at the end of his desk. The top of the orgainzer is the kitty's new favorite place to chill. He also has four portable organizer things for when he's out and about and needs his stuff. One is full of little ducks...and there are a lot of them. The ducks are starting to get old fast. But, at least he's had a really good couple of weeks and this week looks like it should be pretty good too. So, yay!

Today has just been a lazy day. Ed's been gone all day...it's softball tournament time. Last I heard, his team lost one and one one and was getting ready to play a third game (against the team they already lost to). I'll see him eventually. So, while he's out playing, what do I do? I spend over an hour highlighting more of his work stuff. But, if I don't do it, he'll have to and it will cut into the little bit of time I'll get with him this week. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. I was just happy I finally got him to commit to dates for our hospital tour and for our breastfeeding class. Now the trick will be to find time to make him watch the DVD with me.

I just talked to my sister and things are looking good for their move. Her MIL and Scott's aunt spent something like nine hours over there cleaning. Obsessively cleaning...right down to the lightbulbs. I don't think it was necessary to go that far, but whatever makes them happy I guess. At least Becky and Scott didn't have to worry about it. They had their walk through of the house they're buying today and that went fine. Hopefully tomorrow will go smooth and they can get all moved in on Tuesday. :)

It Hurts to Walk

But usually only when I've been sitting for awhile. It's been bothering me enough that I actually remembered to ask my doctor about it. He said that a lot of women experience that sort of discomfort around the 30th week, so I'm perfectly normal (in that respect). Apparently the baby's head is currently resting on my pelvic bone causing said pain. She'll slip behind in a couple of weeks and then we can move on to the next discomfort. Woohoo.

Work was fine today...for a Saturday. I had an author come in and sign at the front of the store and he did pretty well. I made a cake for Carrie's birthday, so I was the most popular girl in the store today. ;) Then Ed and our friends Dave and Deb met me at the store when I got off work and we went out for a lovely dinner at Carrabba's. Yum!

Today was a big day in my sister's world. The movers came this morning (two hours late) and all their furniture and most of their stuff is now out of the house. I volunteered to come over tomorrow to help clean, but Scott's mom and aunt already took charge of that. Not that I love to clean, but I would have been happy to help. They go to both settlements on Monday, so send a positive thought their way that all goes well. Not only are the current owners of the house they're buying terrible to deal with, but their buyer is being a pain-in-the-rear too. It can never just be easy.

Random Musings

• How is it that I can go the whole evening without the telephone ringing, but the moment I sit down to pee my mom calls?
• Why is it that the institutional customer in Canton doesn't call to tell me that she needs me to deliver her books to her TODAY until I'm guaranteed to run into rush hour traffic?
• How come nobody was brave enough to watch the childbirth DVD with me during lunch? ;)
• How many times can I watch Little Miss Sunshine on HBO before it get old?
• Why must I work tomorrow?
• Why does the stupid cable modem keep going out?
• Why does it have to hurt every time I stand up and start to move?
• How much stuff does one baby really need?
• Why can't Eric Bedard pitch for the Orioles every night?
• When will Ed start to make enough money for me to be able to drop down to part-time at work?
• How many people will tell me that my constant swaying must mean I'm ready for the baby?
• Why does the kitty always want to cuddle when I'm trying to type?
• Why is there no more juice in the house? I want juice.
• Is it October yet?

Classes...I Don't Need No Stinkin' Classes!

Or maybe I do, but we decided not to do the childbirth classes after all. We're going to do the hospital tour (mostly for Ed) and my dear friend Brooke found her informational video on childbirth (which is mostly the same information as the class), so she's going to lend that to us. That will save us $75 and a lot of time. I am planning on taking the breastfeeding class however. I just have to get Ed to commit to a date. I really want to give breastfeeding my best shot, so I want as much information and help as I can get.

In my obsessive registry checking, I discovered that things were actually purchased today. Woohoo! Good thing I was bored last night and decided to fiddle around with my registry a little. The big diaper bag that I had registered for originally had gotten pretty bad reviews on the BRU website, so I found one that I liked better and switched them out. And now it's gone. How's that for timing? ;)

Now I'm just waiting for Ed to get home (he wound up staying later at his appointment then he was supposed to) so we can take a nap together. Thank goodness for the rain today...the games he was supposed to umpire were canceled. Of course that means that I'll actually have to make dinner, even though I'm not the slightest bit hungry. Carrie and I went to our beloved Chinese buffet for lunch today and I'm still stuffed. It was yummy though. :)

Bored

Trying to amuse myself right now and not having a lot of luck. Ed's been in bed since 8, trying to get some sleep before his alarm goes off at 2:15. Good times. I'm pretty sure he's not sleeping because it didn't sound like his "sleeping breathing" coming out of the bedroom when I passed it earlier. Hopefully he'll be able to get at least a little bit of sleep. Sucks to be him tomorrow.

So I was downstairs watching television when I decided there was nothing that I felt like watching. So now I'm all the way upstairs on the computer. Nobody's updated their blog and I don't feel like playing POGO. I guess I could check my Babies R Us registry for the millionth time to see that nobody's purchased anything off of it in the past 6 hours. ;) The invitations for the shower were delivered yesterday, so they should be out soon. Then we'll see some action. I'm so obsessive-compulsive about the registry thing...it was the same when we got married. It was actually worse then because I could check while I was at work too, which I can't anymore because we're now on a company system so they know if I'm on an "inappropriate" site. Blah.

At least it's not just mine, I also love when I have friends that are registered places. I enjoy checking their registries on a daily basis as well to see what's been purchased. Perhaps I should just go to work at BRU and play at the registry desk all day. That would be fun.

Everything's Good

Had yet another doctor's appointment today. All's good with the world. Blood sugar's fine (which we already knew), I'm not anemic (didn't really think I would be), and the heartbeat's strong. I start the every other week thing now...and he's giving me a referral for another ultrasound after my next appointment. The only thing that pissed me off was when the chickie weighed me and didn't bother to do it precisely and just put down that I was at the same weight as last time. I should have been two pounds lighter, dammit! :P To make up the difference, I went to the new Chick-fil-a in Parkville and got a chocolate shake (which I've been craving for a week now). It made me happy. ;)

Hot!

This heat is killing me!!! I'm usually not too bad with the heat, but it's definitely true about pregnancy making the heat worse than it would be otherwise. I wonder why...couldn't be the tiny human growing inside of me extracting her own body heat which gets added to mine...could it? ;) Thank goodness for air conditioning. Too bad we're going to go broke trying to pay the BGE bill. Blah.

Went to Becky's again after work today. She has to be all packed up and ready to go by Saturday morning when the movers get there. Sucks to be her. She's got a lot done, but they have a long way to go before then. I was hoping to be helpful, but not so much. I did play with Claire and took Becky to pick her car up from the dealership, so that was helpful. Then mom and I had a quick dinner and I got the heck home because I'm hot and tired.

Not that I'm going to get to sleep anytime soon. Ed's still not home from work and I told him I'd help him put some stuff together for the enrollment he has tomorrow. Last night I put together 100 folders for the D.C. stuff he has this week and then highlighted 100 enrollment forms. Fun stuff. But if I didn't do it, he would have been up until 2 in the morning trying to get it done. Especially since he had to umpire last night. It's all about the teamwork in my house. ;)

Oh...and check it out...I'm 30 weeks today! Woohoo!!!

Don't Wanna Go Back!

The only sucky thing about living so close to work that I can go home for lunch is having to go back to work again. Blah. But at least the day hasn't been too bad so far. It's a Monday. There wasn't anybody fun around to have lunch with, so I opted to go home today. We even have yummy stuff that I can eat here...hooray! I'm typically not a fan of microwave meals, but I've found that the Lean Cuisine pizzas and paninis are quite yummy. Plus they're on sale at Giant this week for $2 each, so bonus!

Ed called me after his weekly meeting today. His boss gave him three groups to work on this week, which is awesome (good $$) but he has to be in D.C. at 4:00 a.m. on Thursday. Yup, I said 4:00 a.m...as in "4 in the morning." He's not going to be a happy camper that night, but hopefully he'll be bringing in the dough.

After work today I get to make a Target stop. I love Target. :) I have to pick up Ed's prescriptions and get some baby laundry detergent so I can start washing all of the clothes that have been coming in. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up the bureau/changing table from my mom's soon, but we can't do that until we get somebody to help Ed with it. It's too heavy for him to do by himself and obviously I can't help...and I don't want my mom lifting it either. Anyone want to volunteer a husband? ;)

Lovely Saturday

Poor Ed had to travel to the D.C. suburbs early this morning for a work meeting, so I had a lovely late morning/afternoon with my mom. She took me out for lunch at By the Docks, which is apparently owned by the same people who own G&M in Linthicum. Yummy, yummy crabcakes...I highly recommend both restaurants to all my fellow crabcake fans. We then went to Toys R Us to look for a birthday present for Claire. Then it was off to BRU, where she bought us a crib mattress. Woohoo...one more thing to mark off my registry. :) Of course, every time I get to take something off, I find something else to add, so it's a never-ending process.

Ed finally got home around 3 and ate the leftover crabcake that I brought home for him. Then he was trapped upstairs for the next several hours working on work stuff and stupid fantasy baseball stuff. I, on the other hand, took a nap and read. Good times. We had a lovely dinner and then floated around the pool for an hour and a half listening to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Maybe we'll actually finish it before the baby's born. I'm not holding my breath on that one though. We'll probably be listening to it in the labor room. Unless, of course, she decided to come during a Ravens game. That would just be funny. ;)

Go See Hairspray!

I finally got to see it and I loved, loved, loved it! Once you got past how creepy John Travolta looked in drag, it was terrific! The music was great, all the actors were perfect and I smiled through the whole thing. If anyone wants to see it, I'll go again in a heartbeat! :)

Other than that, today was just another day. Work was boring, but at least tomorrow is Friday. Although I'm bummed because Ed now has to go to a work meeting on Saturday morning. The only good thing about that is he's going to go to the softball field afterward to do some work on that which he was going to do on Sunday. The stupid tournament is next week, so they want the field to be in decent shape. So I'll get all day Sunday with him...yay!

Tired

My Claire Bear just keeps getting cuter and cuter, but good lord is she exhausting! Especially now that she's mobile. It's hysterical to watch her just speed crawl from one place to another and back again. Stopping, of course, to torture the cat or to pound on a toy. Fun, but tiring!

Got even more baby stuff from Becky today. Now I have plenty of little socks. :) Little socks are so cute...except when you're trying to keep them on little feet. Plus I got a piece of stoneware that she decided she didn't want. I'll take what I can get...I can always use stoneware. She was trying to pawn more stuff off on me, but I was strong and resisted the urge to take her "Sewing for Dummies" or "The Bible for Dummies." I have plenty of books that I don't read already, thank you. If anyone would like them, just let her know. ;)