We’re Having A…

If the 2nd photo doesn’t give it away, I’ll give you a hint: those are baby’s hips and all that lies between them.

Today was our anatomy scan, so the doctor looked at all of baby’s bits. His heart, brain, spine, bones, face, and boy bits. He said that everything looks great at this point and there is no reason to believe that baby will have any issues. I cannot even describe the feeling of relief I felt when the doctor said “everything looks good and you have a healthy baby boy in there, congratulations”… I feel like I can finally allow myself to relax and get excited. I’m thrilled to be having a baby boy! Call me crazy, but I’ve always known that my first child would be a boy. I don’t know how or why, I just knew. I would have been thrilled with either gender, but it just feels “right” that it’s a boy.

So onto my weekly update!

How far along: 18 weeks, 4 days

Total Weight Gain/Loss: +6 lbs. Staying in the 1 lb a week range now, which is good 🙂

Maternity clothes: Same as last week – I live my life in leggings and sweaters these days. lol

Stretch marks: Nope!

Sleep: Been extra sleepy this week, but that could have something to do with the whole getting married thing.

Best moment last week: I married my baby daddy (hehe… no really, I married a doofus my soulmate)

Movement: Most definitely! Baby likes to do aerobics at 11pm each night. Which means that I’ve been staying up WAY past my bedtime so that I can put my hands on my belly and enjoy the show. I’ve felt a few good kicks from the outside now, but Josh has yet to feel it. Whenever he puts his hands on my belly, baby stops moving.

Food cravings: Watermelon still. Mmmmm.

Gender: BLUE!

Labor signs: ……

Belly button – in or out? Still in. My belly really isn’t that big, I just look full. In fact, it seems to have gotten smaller this week. Odd! So for now, my belly button is staying put.

What I miss: Nothing, I’m perfectly content with how things are right at this very moment 🙂

What I am looking forward to: Going to bed tonight for baby aerobics time ❤

Milestones: HEALTHY BABY BOY!

No picture this week. But I will go ahead and post a wedding collage that my beautiful mother-in-law made up.

The Pregnancy Saga: Week 1

And it begins… I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the name of my blog, but I’m oddly attached to it. I feel like once I acknowledge the fact that my dogs are no longer my “kids” and the only things that rely on me, then I’m acknowledging how quickly life is changing. Now don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the changes that are occurring, but any time things change rapidly I think it’s only natural to have a little bit of fear mixed in with the excitement.

Anyway, I’ve been reading a few blogs and I thought it was a cute idea to do a pregnancy update once a week. So each week I will fill out this little questionnaire-thing and (maybe) post a picture. Here we go:

How far along: 17 weeks, 4 days

Total Weight Gain/Loss: +5 lbs – woohoo! Until about 3 weeks ago I didn’t think I’d ever actually gain anything. I think it’s time to stop eating everything in sight now.

Maternity clothes: On occasion. I don’t fit into any of my non-maternity pants and I only have one pair of actual maternity pants (thanks Leah!) so I’ve been living in leggings, tank tops, and sweaters. Thank goodness for winter, otherwise this plan would lead to heatstroke and sweat in places it should never be.

Stretch marks: If I were already getting stretch marks, I’d be in serious trouble. Been using some delightful smelling body oil from Burt’s Bees each night though. I smell like a lemon drop when I crawl into bed every night.
Sleep: I get up 1-2 times a night to pee, but other than that I sleep like a rock these days from the moment my head hits the pillow. Been having some very realistic dreams though… some are sweet dreams about the baby and some are horrific. And there is this reoccurring dream that I forget I’m pregnant and get hammered drunk, then remember I’m pregnant and go through a major panic attack. Not cool, dude. Not cool.

Best moment last week: What even happened last week? Yeah, preggo brain has hit full-force. I didn’t believe it was a real thing until last week. I’ve finally acknowledged it though. That’s the first step, right?

Movement: Subtle ones! I don’t feel it until I sit still, usually at night right as I climb into bed. Baby nestles in for the night and it feels like there is some sort of amphibious alien squirming around in there. He(she) gets little bursts of energy and I feel what I can only assume is the equivalent of a fetal temper tantrum going on in there. Nothing from the outside yet.

Food cravings: Watermelon. Cannot get enough of the stuff.

Gender: We’ve felt like it is a boy since day 1, doctor saw what he *thinks* might be boy bits. We’ll find out soon!

Labor signs: The word “labor” is not part of my vocabulary yet and I’d like to keep it that way for a good long while. Thanks.

Belly button – in or out? In. Stay. Outies are creepy and I will put a band-aid over it if it starts popping out.

What I miss: Energy. My favorite jeans. Margaritas.

What I am looking forward to: Getting married on Saturday and anatomy scan next Wednesday!! I may have to get crafty… my belly may or may not fit in my dress. Who’s up for a nudist wedding?!

Milestones: Nausea is 90% GONE.

Photo: I’m cheating and using one from last week because I’m too lazy to take a new one. Left is 12 weeks, right is 17 weeks. (Actually taken during week 16 but I had a big meal, so it’s equivalent to my pre-meal week 17 belly. Deal with it.)

That’s all for now, folks! Hopefully next week I’ll have a nice ultrasound photo and a wedding photo to share with you all. 🙂

Wedding Vs. Marriage

It’s time to get something off my chest. My apologies in advance for the rambling – I have a lot to say.

Most of you know that I’m engaged. Engaged to the love of my life. For most of us, the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word “engaged” is wedding planning. Of course! Better start now, we all know that planning a wedding takes MONTHS, sometimes even more than a year! I mean, the whole point of getting engaged is to have the perfect wedding…

And that’s where my heart breaks and my head explodes. I can’t tell you how many people have asked me since the day Josh popped the question “have you started planning yet?” And when I tell them that no, I have not, I get the follow up “do you even have a date?” Well, sure… sort of. We originally wanted to be engaged for about 6 months, so that means January sometime. Then of course, “that’s coming up, aren’t you stressed because you haven’t planned anything yet?” *sigh* No, I’m not stressed. Why, you ask? I have a few follow-up questions for you.

1. What would happen if the food wasn’t perfect?

2. What would happen if my dress and/or hair wasn’t perfect?

3. What would happen if I didn’t get the venue I wanted?

4. In summary, what would the end result of our wedding be if it wasn’t absolutely PERFECT?

I’ll tell you what would happen. At the end of the day, I’d be married. I would be married to the love of my life. Disastrous, right?

I’ll admit, I got excited to plan everything out for a couple weeks. I looked at wedding ideas on Pinterest, I went wedding dress shopping and found a beautiful dress that I then bought on a pre-owned wedding dress website (OMG, did she just say she bought a USED dress?), I found a gorgeous venue that would make for some awesome photos… but after a week or two, I realized something. When I thought about my wedding, that’s exactly what I thought about. “My wedding”. That’s when I slammed on the brakes. I had to think about the word “wedding” for a bit and I realized that when I thought about that word, I thought about flowers, oak trees, dresses, cake, food… but I didn’t think about the union of two lives, the promise of lifelong love and commitment. Honestly, I was disappointed in myself. I had been swept up in the hype. I let our culture dictate what my wedding should look like and how much we should spend. Then, as if by divine intervention, a set of circumstances arose that made us reconsider having a traditional “wedding” altogether. We began considering alternate ideas such as going to Vegas to get hitched just saying our vows, then throwing a little party to celebrate our commitment. It just felt right. I already had a dress, most of our friends and family are within driving distance (though sadly, not all), and most of all, it sounded like a lot more fun than stressing out for months to make sure we had the perfect wedding. Sounded great to me.

Then we got people’s reactions to our (seemingly brilliant) idea. “Why don’t you just wait until you can afford the wedding of your dreams, sweetie?” (let me just throw it out there, that unless you are my mother or Josh, don’t call me sweetie. The word alone is enough to merit a fist to the mouth, then add the condescending tone… yeah, you’d better just walk run away.) Well, sure. We could wait. I mean, who knows if it will be 3 months or 5 years before we have the money for the kind of wedding YOU want us to have? Sounds reasonable. Next. “You’re going to regret not having a real wedding one day. Don’t you want to look back at those photos with your children?” I’m just going to respond to this question and all other questions or comments that anybody may have regarding this issue with the following statement.

What makes this sweet, casual, private moment:

Any LESS special, or even legitimate, than this expensive, extensively-planned moment:

Mine may be the unpopular opinion, but I believe that people who want to get married will find a way. And that, honestly, is more romantic than any amount of money spent on an extravagant wedding. After all, the amount of money spent does NOT correlate with the amount of love felt between two people or the strength of their marriage. This whole situation has left me with a bad taste in my mouth from the word “wedding”. From here on out, we are simply getting married. We are not having a wedding.

So before anybody else has anything negative to say: Yes, Josh and I are getting married. Yes, it will be casual. No, there won’t be a horse-drawn carriage or 10,000 white roses. If you happen to be invited and will be disappointed at the lack of fancy food – please stay home.

Disclaimer: to anyone who will inevitably get offended because they spent a fortune on their wedding – The photos above can be reversed as well. There is nothing better about a small, inexpensive get-together versus a large, expensive wedding. It all comes down to personal preference and budget. I’m sure all of your big weddings were beautiful and I wish you the happiest of marriages.

BBQ Cupcakes!

Ok, so not actually what it sounds like.. thank goodness. That sounds rather awful. I found these awesome cupcakes on pinterest and just kind of winged it. They turned out super cool though! They’ll be even better next time… if there is a next time. They were a lot of work!

What you will need:

– Cupcake mix

– Icing

– Food dye

– Chocolate

– Wax paper

– Gummy bears

– Tooth Picks

– Frosting decorating tip-things (I’m not a baker. I don’t know what they’re called or how to use them)

– Plastic bags

– Patience

– About 2.5 hours

Step 1: Find something in your house that is approximately the same size as the top of a cupcake. Trace some circles on a piece of wax paper – add extra circles to allow for messy grill tops. I made 16 cupcakes and did 20 grill tops just to be safe. I was bound to mess up and/or break a couple.

Step 2: melt some chocolate (I wanted to find candy melts, but this was a last minute project and the grocery store doesn’t have them, so I just used semi-sweet chocolate chips. It worked, but the chocolate needs to be kept refrigerated once it’s formed, which makes these difficult to take to an outdoor BBQ in the middle of the summer. Bummer.) Put the melted chocolate in a plastic bag and snip the very tip of the corner off. TURN THE WAX PAPER OVER so the pencil outlines are on the bottom and you’re tracing the side without pencil lead on it. Trace the circles in melted chocolate from your bag and add some grill lines through the middle. Any extra chocolate left in the bag after doing the grill tops – make some chocolate hamburger patties with. Put them in the fridge if you used chocolate chips. They don’t harden well at room temperature.

Step 3: Make cupcakes! I don’t cook, I don’t bake. I made boxed cupcakes – 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 chocolate.

Step 4: While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, cut your gummy bears into thirds and put them onto the toothpicks like skewers. This is very time consuming. And makes your fingers hurt. A little trick I figured out is to get some canola oil and grease up the tooth picks before stabbing the bears. They will slide on much easier.

Step 5: Dye the frosting. I did 1/2 of the frosting red (pinkish) and the other 1/2 yellow. I added the frosting to a Ziploc bag, alternating colors – 1 scoop of red, 1 scoop yellow… etc. Snip the tip off the bag, a bit more than you did for the chocolate. If you know how to use frosting decorating tip-things.. use a frosting bag and do your thing. If you’re like me and you have no idea, just wing it and hold the tip onto the corner of the bag as you frost. I liked the look of the spiky tip and added some “flames” to some of the cupcakes.

Step 6: Add the grill tops!

Step 7: Add your skewers and burger patties!

There you have it! Adorable. Don’t use chocolate chips if you’re transporting these to someone else’s BBQ or if you want to be able to leave them out on the table for aesthetic appeal – they melt easily. Wish me luck, I’m about to take them on a 30 minute drive while it’s almost 90 degrees out.

Happy Memorial Day – party safe and wear sunscreen. But most of all, have fun and remember why we’re celebrating!

 

DIY Fun

A friend and I have been making a habit of visiting thrift shops and we found some cool old shutters at the Good Cents store. (if you haven’t visited this store – it’s pretty awesome. Everything is SO cheap – usually just cents! Just remember to bring hand sanitizer, you’re going to get a good layer of grime on you from sifting through bins of stuff. Worth it, though!) We got them without a clue what to do with them, but after some thinking – we came up with a pretty neat idea, if I may say so myself! DVD holders!

The shutters looked exactly like this: (though these are not our shutters. I wasn’t sure how this would turn out and I neglected to take a “before” photo – the shame!)

We hit the hardware store and chose 2 colors – I chose a cocoa brown for the base color and a sky blue for the top color. We cleaned all the grime off the shutters, then spray painted the base color and allowed it to dry. We topped it with the top color and gave it a good long time to dry. Sanding when still tacky is a bad idea. After a couple hours, we got some sand paper sponges and just went for it! We were worried about being too rough and taking off too much paint, but we quickly realized that the rougher we were, the cooler it looked!

The final product:

I need to do a bit more sanding on the top and right side, but I’m really happy with how they turned out so far! I’ll have to get a picture of Leah’s later, she chose really awesome colors – teal on the bottom and a smokey blue on top.

What I would do next time is beat them up a bit more before painting them. Get some good dents in the wood – when you sand over the dents, it gives it a really neat look!

I love it. We also got a huge bag of old clothes from the salvation army for $20! Who knew that Friday was “fill the bag day”? All you can fit in a big paper bag for $20 – we got 33 things! That’s 60 cents a piece! Keep an eye out for more posts about what we do with those clothes. We started with some huge polka dot shirts that we are almost done re-making into some adorable collared tank tops! 🙂

Chapter 7: “__________”

The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur. A quick recap: I graduated from FSU with by B.S. in Psychology (and minor in Chemistry… don’t ask), I turned 22, I enjoyed a lovely visit from my family, and began a new chapter in life. That chapter doesn’t have a title yet, but neither did this post when I began writing it so I’m confident that given some time, this chapter of life will find a title as well.

Obviously, there is a lot of change going on lately. One bit of change that I’m finding myself quite fond of is this: when I come home from work, I get to do a little something called “relaxing”. I think most college students can attest to the unfamiliarity of this concept, likely due to the constant nagging in the back of your mind when you try to do so. (“I should be studying! If I don’t study, I will surely fail! I can’t even enjoy this movie because I’m thinking about my Organic Chemistry final next week!”)

Another bit of this change that I’m not so fond of is somewhat related… what do you do with that time? I almost miss studying. I have some deranged version of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve developed some strange feelings of appreciation for the institution that held me captive for the past 4 years. I think I need a hobby.

Ok, moving on to bigger and better things. I used my “relaxing time” today to play ball with the dogs. I went a bit snap happy with my new i-phone. Yeah so, it took a while to figure out how to use the camera. And make phone calls. And do everything else on it… but I managed to get a few cute shots.

Without further ado:

There is no greater bliss than Bruno with a tennis ball

And it’s not a good time unless the ball leaves slobber marks when engaged in post-play bouncing

Lilly didn’t get left out, mom just forgot her camera during her play session

Politiots

In case you didn’t get my bad title, it’s a fusion of the words “political” + “idiots”.  You all know why I’m posting about this, but if you don’t, you’re probably a Politiot.
The number of rude, disrespectful comments I’ve seen all over the internet over the past couple days is absolutely ridiculous. I’m not going to put my personal political views into this post, but I will say this. When I think of AMERICA, I think of:

Freedom.

Family.

Rights.

The list goes on, but I think you get the gist of what I think America stands for. Good things. The freedom to do and be what we want. The freedom to say what we want, vote, etc etc etc. Why though, when we have such freedom, are we so disrespectful towards each other? Here are some things I’ve seen floating around my facebook feed:

“If you support Obama, delete me as a friend.” Well, whether I am an Obama supporter or not, I deleted her as a friend. If you can’t even be FACEBOOK FRIENDS with someone who has different views that you, good luck ever having friends. I’ve known this person since I was a young child, but it didn’t bother me one bit to not associate myself with someone like that.

“Looks like the end of the world is upon us after all.” Really? The end of the world? A little dramatic if you ask me. America is still America after the past 4 years of Obama. Bye bye, don’t want to associate myself with such pessimism and stupidity.

“Rest in peace, America.” I have no worlds for this. If you have that little faith in our country, then do us all a favor and leave.

Well let me just tell you this. Whether Mitt Romney or Obama had won, America would still be America, we would still be lucky enough to live in this great country, we would still have our rights and freedom. You want to know what’s going to “tear this country down” or “drive it into the ground”? American citizens. The disrespect we all show to one another, the hate, and the pessimism.
Let’s talk about the word HATE. When you hear it, what do you think? Is the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word hate “America”? Because it probably should be, at least this month. The word hate should elicit bad emotions. But why, in such a great country, are we so damn hateful?

It’s been said that exit polling showed that somewhere around 40% of people who voted were “moderates”. This political divide that all the hate is creating does not reflect that. It’s creating more and more extremism and dividing the entire country. We’re just a group of whiny b*tches and sore losers.
To summarize: Obama won. Get over it. And please, in 4 years, vote for whoever you want, but accept the fact that whoever wins is who the MAJORITY of the country wants to run the US of A. Deal with it without the hate and disrespect, because that’s why America is going downhill. Turn the hate into…

LOVE. Love your friends no matter what their political views. Love your country, love your family, love your neighbors and peers.. stop hating people over something so petty as who they voted for.

Stop all of this:

AND BE A LITTLE MORE

Puppies, Pools, Family, and Yule

I’ve failed once again at blogging regularly. I wonder if I’ll ever be any good at this! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas or any other holiday that you may celebrate. We traveled down to south FL to visit with my family for Christmas. Thank goodness we have well behaved K9 travelers, even though Lilly was trying to gas us out of the truck on the way down. We watched Josh’s temperature gauge on his truck on the way down and took bets on how much warmer it would be down there than up here- about 20 degrees! Needless to say, Lilly was happy when we got to grandmas and the sun was shining. First thing she did was run to the porch door and wait for someone to open it for her, then sprint to the pool and jump right in. I swear she was a dolphin in her past life. Or more likely, a shark.

I say more likely a shark because God forbid someone else is in the water with her. She will climb on top of you and you’ll probably drown. Not because she means to drown you, but rather she wants to play and doesn’t realize that wrestling in the water is much different than on land. Bruno decided to get all the way in with a little encouragement and sure enough, Lilly jumped in right on top of him and clung on. Fully clothed, I had to jump into the COLD water and pull her off because she was accidentally drowning him. Poor guy. I got her off and he doggy paddled to the steps, a little traumatized but no worse for wear. He decided that this was the way to enjoy the water from then on:

Probably a smart plan, Bruno. At least until Lilly is removed from the equation!

In other news, we had a nice Christmas with the family. It was nice to visit with everyone and I was ultra proud of my big furry boy for being so wonderful with the children. Having Lilly there as backup made him so much more confident and social, and the kids were able to love on them both. Lilly, of course, just wanted to lick them to death, hence her new tag:

Overall, it was a fun and fairly uneventful Christmas vacation. I leave you with some photos of Lilly’s shenanigans and hopes that everyone has a wonderful remainder of the holiday season and a happy new year!

So long now!

Cuddles and Collars

So the day after my post complaining about the weather in FL, it was cold and rainy. Apparently I left out cold and rainy days in my list of nasty kinds of days that Florida has. Then, the following day, it got sunny, cool, and absolutely gorgeous out. I left those days out too, I guess. So this was just a big “up yours” from FL proving me wrong in more than one way.

I’ll stop boring you all with talk about the weather, what am I, 80 years old? So in other news, I bought the dogs new collars yesterday. They’re not here yet, but expect loads of pictures when the arrive. It’s money I really shouldn’t spend, but something about those cute little faces makes all rationality fly out the window. One day, when I’m rich, I’ll have the most spoiled rotten dogs ever. But for now, some love and dog biscuits will have to suffice. And it seems that it just might.

This is Lilly’s first experience (that she probably remembers) with cold weather. She’s all kinds of confused as to how to stay warm. Looks like we’re gonna have to look out for a deal on a weatherbeeta blanket for her cute little behind. She loves to lay by the fire at night with me:

After staring at a pile of blankets for a couple of minutes, she finally decided that her mental powers just were not strong enough to make them cover her on their own, so she nuzzled her way into my blankets and cuddled on the couch with me, nice and warm. Had to make her a blanket nest to sleep in last night, poor little baby jumped up in bed and under the covers to spoon with me, but mean old daddy came to bed and there was no more room for Lilly.

And before I sign off for the day, here’s just a picture that makes me laugh:

Blogging Failure

You already know this, but I’m a complete blogging failure. I got so caught up with school that I forgot about my blog until I got a random email saying that I got my first actual subscription today. Wow.. someone remembered my blog before I did. Fail.

So to make up for my complete lack of dedication, I will fill you in on the last month. (Aren’t you so excited, my life is just thrilling, after all…)

So the last you all knew, the furry things were frolicking in the woods and we thought it was finally fall. Well we were wrong. We are currently in the in-between season called FloridaSucks. It’s 90 degrees in the afternoon, and 50 degrees at night. So basically, when I wake up and have to walk to class every day at 7 A.M., it’s cold, and I have to wear warm clothes. But by the time I go home in the afternoon, I’m sweating bullets. Layers are a person having to deal with the season FloridaSucks best friend. Start out with some shorts, put on some sweatpants over top of them, a tee-shirt, with a sweater. As the day goes on, first you shed the sweats. Then the sweater. Then you contemplate shedding the shorts and tee-shirt, but your conscience gets the best of you before you make that mistake (hopefully).

We’ve had some really nice days, but it always happens that on the nice days, you’re busy. Then you think “Wow, it’s been really nice the past couple days, we should do something outside tomorrow!” and tomorrow rolls around and it’s either:

A) raining

B) REALLY hot

C) raining AND really hot

Somebody give Florida some anti-menopausal medication or we’re talking divorce here. She’ll cheer up for a month or so then do this again. The season of FloridaSucks happens about 3 times a year. Once right before Fall for about a month, once in the middle of “winter” (florida doesn’t really have winter.. though that’s what the old people call it) for a couple weeks, and once right before Spring (which is really just summer starting early) for another month.

The furry ones are doing well, continuing to do what they do best- sleep when we have time to play with them, and play when we don’t. Shed all over the house, destroy whatever they can, but most of all, look super cute doing it. (That’s what counts).

Here are some pictures from last month: Hopefully these are cute enough to make up for my blogging failure.

THIS is why Bruno’s tag says “Can’t Holy My Licker”

“Shhh, we’re hunting squirrels…

My favorite Bruno expression.. “Say what??”

And showing how big Lilly is getting… !