A Baby TOMORROW!

Well, friends. Tomorrow my life is going to change forever. I am still having a million contractions all day long. They aren't doing anything for my body, other than rasing my blood pressure, so I am being induced tomorrow. I am so, so nervous, especially since I have planned to do this with no medication. This post is going to be short and sweet, as I am freaking out trying to get everything together. I hope all of you are having a wonderful start to the week.

Nesting and Hoping for Baby to Come Soon!

I swear, if you saw me today, you would think I was on crack. I have gotten so much accomplished in one day. Let me back up and say that my whole pregnancy, I have been absolutely exhausted. I have had to force myself to do anything. Then, today I get up after one hour of sleep, go to the doctor, run errands, deep clean the whole apartment, and do laundry. I feel so accomplished. Supposedly, this is called nesting. It sure does help to get things done.

I went to the doctor today and got some somewhat encouraging news. After the last three days of early labor, the doctor thinks little Trae will be here in the next two to three days. I can't quite wrap my mind around that. I am so, so excited.

As I mentioned in the last post, I am planning on having a natural birth. This was something I knew I wanted even before I got pregnant. I just don't like medical interventions unless they are absolutely necessary. I think the human body is an amazing thing. God designed us well. Women have been giving birth naturally for years without pain medicine. I completely believe this is something I can do. That's not to say that I don't think it will be painful. I am expecting it to be incredibly painful, but so worth it. I did a ton of research on the subject earlier in my pregnancy. There are so many great books and documentaries about the while process. I completely recommend that you consider it if you are going to be giving birth. I will let you know how it goes.

Art is out on the boats. I pray he gets home for the birth of his son! I hope you all have a lovely rest of the week. Hopefully (for real, this time) I will have a baby soon!

Early Labor and Hair Dye

I have been on a little blogging hiatus. I have been meaning to update, but with Art home for a week, life always gets crazy. We try to cram a month worth of errands, dates, and other activities into one week, which leaves time for nothing.

Yesterday, I went to labor and delivery at the hospital because I was having lots of contractions. They were 3 minutes apart, just not strong enough. They called it early labor and said I would probably be back soon. Well, let me tell you friends, their version of soon and my version of soon are not the same. Baby is still in there. I am so ready to be done being pregnant. I am ready for our sweet baby to be here. Having constant contractions and thinking that it could be any time now is a bummer because it just makes me hurt and makes time drag.

As I mentioned previously, I love beauty products and plan to write a little review about them every now and then. While I was trying to get rid of the pain of contractions yesterday, I decided to dye my hair. I am not a big fan of dyeing my hair by myself, but I was bored, and I had received a coupon for a free box of Garnier HerbaShine dye. My dear friend, Hillary, taught me an important lesson when we were in college: when using drug store hair dyes, never pick one with a descriptive word in the color. Always go for the one that says natural! So, medium natural brown it was, and I love the color. It is just the right shade of brown, and it got rid of all the red that was left in my hair from my hair adventures when I worked at the spa. The dye did make my hair look a little dry, as most drug store brands will. I was hoping for more shine, since it was ammonia free. Overall, I'm not really disappointed with the brand, but I'm not completely sold on it either. I love the color, but there are better drug store hair dyes out there.

I will be writing again soon. Hopefully it will be about how I have had baby Trae. I am ridiculously excited about trying natural labor. That just may be the topic of my next blog post. If you know of any ways to speed up this so called early labor process, please let me know! It's pretty miserable.

Fear of the Unknown

This is going to be a rather short post, but since I haven't written anything in quite a few days, I felt like I needed to write something. Oh my. Time is flying by. I can't believe that I will be at full term tomorrow. Basically, that means that Trae could come safely at any time now. Of course, it is best that he stays in there a few more weeks, so we will see what he decides to do.

One thing that has kind of scared me about the last few weeks of this pregnancy is the fear of the unknown. I am a planner. I like to have a specific time and day for everything. Art is completely unlike this. He likes spur-of-the-moment events. He does not feel the need to plan anything and gets frustrated that I love to have a plan for every day. When it comes to Trae, I have no idea of what day he is going to come, much less what time. Since Art is away so much for work, this tends to worry me sometimes. What if he comes when Art is away? Will he get here in time? What am I supposed to do? Why can't I just know when it will all happen? I know that the whole thing will be a beautiful surprise. I am just trying to adjust to this method of thinking. My life will no longer be so planned once I have this little baby. I am trying to rest in the fact that God knows exactly when and He wants what is best for me. Therefore, I do not need to spend my days worrying.

Trae's second and last baby shower was last weekend. We got so many lovely things. My parents were here for the shower, which was fantastic. My parents are just wonderful. I miss them so much. When they were here, I had my very own dog walker, aka, my dad. My mom spent a lot of time helping me in the baby room, so it is finally getting somewhere! I am beginning to feel like it will be ready for him when he gets here! I will have pictures up as soon as everything gets in order.

Last night I slept like a normal person. I am hoping that was the end to my insomnia. We will see. Goodnight.

Meet My Family

I thought I would use this post to introduce you to my little family. I have been trying for the last two days to write a more substantial blog post, but I have just been so exhausted. I had heard of third trimester insomnia, but I had never experienced it until this week. I am almost to tired to even think. I am sure that will only get worse in a few weeks when Trae is born.

Meet me...

This picture was (obviously) taken on my wedding day, almost a year and a half ago. I can't believe it has already been that long.

Meet my wonderful husband, Art...

What a good looking man! We met our first day of college, but didn't even start dating until about three years later. In fact, we barely even talked until then. I will have to post our story on here sometime. It is pretty unique.

Meet Moses...

I promise you, he looks cute, but he sure can be frustrating. I think he was put in our life to develop my patience.

Meet Moo...

This cat was my very first pet of my own. I love him a lot. He first belonged to one of my best friends from college who named the poor cat Nameless Slob. Then his name went to Slobs. After I got married, I grew a heart and realized that he needed a better name. Someone once told me that Moo means "cat" in another language. I think it might actually means "pig," but regardless, the name has stuck.

Finally, meet Moxy...

After Art and I got married, my grandmother sent us a check. Art knew I was lonely because of his work schedule, so he suggested that we take that check and go adopt another cat at the SPCA. You can't see his eyes in this picture, but they are bright blue, which is why we picked him.

So, that's my little family. I know, we have way too many animals. That kind of explains why I am always cleaning. I hate having animal hair on the floor. Unfortunately, that means that I have to vacuum about twice a day.

Okay, I am off to make cookies. Do you want to know what the best chocolate chip cookie recipe is? It's on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bags. I'm not even kidding. Out of all the recipes I have ever tried, this one is my favorite.

Things I Like.

Happy New Year to everyone! I thought last year was filled with a lot of firsts, but this year will probably be filled with even more. How exciting. I can't wait for what this year is going to bring. I hope all of you had fun New Years Eve celebrations. As I mentioned in the last post, Art was not home for New Years, so I did not do much. I did, however, go to see Black Swan. I had heard so many great things about it, so I was so excited to finally go see it. It was good, but I wasn't blown away like some people were. I guess I went in expecting the ending, so everything happening in the movie wasn't a huge shock to me. That being said, it was still enjoyable and I am glad I saw it.

I am trying to decide the direction of this blog. Obviously, I made it to write about my life now that there will be a little baby in the picture. I plan to use this blog as a replacement for facebook. Let's face it, facebook is getting pretty lame. It's fun when you are in college, but once you get out and realize there is more to life than party pictures and wall posts, it gets boring. Other than that, I would like to use it to post about things I generally enjoy doing. Three things come to mind. I love playing with make up; I love baking; and, I love cleaning. I never said my life was exciting...

So, first, a little skin care tip for you: vitamin E oil. It is a miracle worker. I promise. It will help get rid of redness on the skin, ease irritation, and it helps the skin stretch. I threw in the stretching part because I am ridiculous, but I was thinking that maybe if it helps skin elasticity, it may prevent wrinkles in the long run? I don't know but using it for that can't harm anything, so I mixed some in with my nightly face lotion and we will see if it helps with any wrinkling ten years down the road. Haha. What made me love vitamin E oil was that I have had a really weird itchy rash on the said of my face for a few years. I have been to a few dermatologists and have had multiple medical creams for it and nothing has worked. Since I started using vitamin E oil, it has almost completely disappeared. Every now and then it will come back for a few days, but compared to how it used to be, it is a ton better.

Second, I said I love baking. I am surprisingly good at it, considering I am the champion at burning anything I cook. I plan to share some of my favorite recipes in the future.

Last, I am interested in getting into more organic cleaning. If anyone has tips, let me know. Recently, I have learned that vinegar is an excellent household cleaner. I don't necessarily want to get into organic cleaning because it is good for the environment. I drive an unnecessarily large SUV... I don't recycle... Honestly, I think "going green" is just a stupid trend. I love the earth, but I just haven't gotten caught up in all the things some people do. Sorry if that is offensive, but I really don't care. I am interested in finding more organic cleaning methods, because for two reasons. First, I believe in the long run, it is cheaper. I am all about saving money. Second, I have terrible asthma. The smell of all the chemicals in cleaners does absolutely nothing to help it. However, as I type this, my house smells like all kinds of chemical cleaners. Haha. Hey, I just discovered the vinegar trick. I have to start somewhere.

Well, that was long. Hopefully in the future, my posts will be somewhat more exciting.