It's Been A LONG While

Hey guys!  Seriously, it has been a LONG time.  I would love to get back into blogging regularly, but I really don't want to make any goals that I am not sure I can keep right now.  Life is CRAZY, but so wonderful.  Here are a few things going on...

• Trae turns one tomorrow!
• In posts from forever ago, I had posted about working out via Insanity.  I had fantastic results.  I lost five inches in one week!  I lost all my pregnancy weight plus about sixteen more pounds.  Then...
• I found out I am pregnant again!  We are SO excited.  Baby A, as we are calling him, is due June 28.  And, yes, another boy!
• I have become an expert smootie maker.  I am drinking a fantastic one right now.  Bananas, Strawberries, Pineapple, Oranges, Greek Yogurt, Honey, Soy Milk.  Yum.

Trae Needs To Sleep!

You know, the past few days I have not been blogging as much.  Why?  Oh, just because all of a sudden, my child decided that he doesn't need to sleep during the day... EVER.  No naps for Trae.  I am tired and our little home is a complete disaster.  Starting tomorrow, Trae and I are going to work on a new nap time routine.  To say that I am dreading it is an understatement.  Until now, Trae has napped in his swing.  Now that he is getting bigger, it is time for him to start sleeping in his crib for naps.  However, he hates his crib.  I anticipate many tears.  I promise my posting will get more consistent again sometime this week!  Until then, if you have any magical napping advice, please send it my way!

Oh, and I need to finish the 30 Day Photo Challenge!

Day 18 - A picture of your biggest insecurity.

Umm... Okay, I have no full body shots since having Trae, and I only have like three from when I was pregnant because I so cleverly avoided the camera.  My whole body is my biggest insecurity right now.  Pregnancy was not nice to me.  Actually, let me re-phrase that.  I was not nice to myself during pregnancy.  And let me re-phrase that AGAIN.  I was too nice to myself during pregnancy, which in turn wasn't that nice.  Make sense?  I ate whatever I wanted and kind of stopped working out and became pretty sadly lazy.  Now that Trae isn't in there anymore, I look at myself and think, oops!  Haha.  Hence why I am now not eating much and working out nightly.  It sucks, but I have got to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight or I am never going to feel good about myself again!  So, because this is, in fact, a photo challenge, here is one of the few semi-recent photos I can find of my whole body.  I am 39 weeks pregnant here... and huge!  Oh, by the way, 50 pounds of this are already gone.  Yeah, I did say I gained a lot!

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.

What a Year!

Wow. It is almost 2011. This has been such an exciting year. I would like to make a post about specific exciting things that happened every month, but honestly, everything has all run together. I honestly don't even remember what Art and I did last New Year's Eve. I am sure it involved alcohol. Haha. This New Years, Art is sadly not even home. He has such a ridiculous job schedule. I am sure I will address that in later posts because it has kind of been a huge deal in my life.

Here are a few key things I remember about this year...

In February, we got a puppy named Moses. I hated him. A LOT. I decided that getting a dog while living in an apartment was the worst thing I had ever agreed to do, even though I had begged Art to get me a puppy for months. He is almost a year old now, and I have come around. He is a smart, well-behaved yellow lab, and he tries his best to entertain me while Art is away.

In May, one of my very best friends got married. It was my first wedding to be in, and I am still so happy for her. The dress I wore in the wedding was empire waist, and the way it fell on my body made it look like I had a belly. I remember joking with another one of my good friends that I was pregnant. I thought about how Art would die if that was true. At that point in our lives, he was planning on going back to college to get a more conventional job. He said the only thing that would stop him was if I got pregnant. A few days after that wedding, I found out that I was pregnant. Funny how life works. More funny the plans that God has for us when we don't have any clue.

In June, our lease was up at our first apartment. We spent our first year of marriage in a one bedroom apartment. We didn't think we would need more room in that first year, but we both underestimated that large amount of stuff that comes when you combine two lives into one. We moved to a two bedroom apartment that was on the first floor of a complex. We were thrilled about this first floor business because our last apartment was on the third floor. (Please don't get me started about how frustrating it is to drag a million bags of groceries up all those stairs when Art is at work.) Soon after moving into our new place, I started getting really sick. We found out just a short month and a half later that the place was full of mold, so in August we had to pack up and move again!

In November, we started looking for houses. We have found two great potential neighborhoods to build in, so we are now in the process of figuring that out. It is still mind blowing to me that we are old enough to purchase something as huge as a house.

December was a month that went by so quickly. My birthday is in December, and even though Art wasn't here on the actual day, he still made sure it was very special. He got me a ring I had been wanting forever. He also got me an iPhone, which has been entertaining to say the least. We had our first baby shower. I love showers... At least the ones that are for me. Haha. It's like another birthday, except this time all the gifts were for baby Trae. Then there was Christmas. Let me tell you why this was so special. I mentioned that Art has a very different work schedule. Up until this Christmas, we had never spent a holiday together. NEVER. Well, this year he was lucky enough to be off of work for Christmas. It was wonderful. We went to Oklahoma to be with my family and had a great time. Not to mention, I got this great little computer that I am typing on right now. My last one took a rather unfortunate walk with me in the rain.

Those were just a few of the many, many events that happened in the last year. I hope all of you have a very happy and safe New Year.

Getting Older and Thoughts of How Things Would Be...

I turned 24 this year. My first thought about that is how close it is to 25 and how once you turn 25, you might as well be 30. 30 terrifies me. Growing up in general scares me. I am not one of those ladies who thinks that their thirties will be the prime of their life. To me, the thirties consist of the beginning of wrinkles and the days that you can no longer get away with wearing fun eyeshadow.

I think I may have started feeling old at 22, but now I feel like I am starting to act the part. You know you are getting older when some of your favorite Christmas presents consist of a recipe book, a password keeper, and a fabulous pink spatula. Okay, I did get a new MacBook Pro and an iPhone for Christmas, so I guess I am still a little bit young, but I sure am enjoying all the useful household items.

When I was growing up, I always imagined the day that I would grow up and have kids. I always thought pregnant ladies looked so cute. There was no way that pregnancy could be full of anything but sunshine and rainbows. I had no idea of all the unpleasant things that went along with it.

This pregnancy was a complete surprise for Art and I. I have to say that I am thrilled to be pregnant. I have been so blessed with a healthy pregnancy and a healthy little baby thus far. That being said, when I found out I was pregnant, I had crazy ideas of how things would be. I would not gain over 20 pounds, and I would for sure not get a stretch mark. To you ladies who go through a pregnancy and achieve that, I have to say that you are a freak of nature and I am jealous. I quickly found out that my thoughts were unrealistic. Pregnancy is uncomfortable and full of added weight, stretch marks, and feeling pretty lousy. I still can't wait for this little baby, though. As for if I would do it again, I don't necessarily want to, but I'm sure I will.

I just might do some work in the baby room today... My countdown tells me I only have 4 weeks and 4 days left until January 31st. At the rate I have been getting things done in there, I better get to work.

I guess it's time to start blogging... At least that's what my husband tells me. I need something to call a "hobby." I have been blessed to be (f)unemployed for the last six months. I like to say I am retired, but I guess soon, I will say I am a "stay at home mom." This little blog will be about my little family. I am married to a wonderful man who I met on my very first day of college. We have been married for over a year, which is crazy. I never thought I would be where I am right now.

Our life is about to change... a lot. In about a month, we will have a baby. I can't wait... I think. I looked at our little countdown today and it said there were 33 days left. That is more than overwhelming to me. I am so far from having things ready. I love to plan. I love lists. I love to have things done weeks before hand. However, for some reason, I have nothing done for the baby. I am absolutely so excited for him to be here, but I think I am in a little bit of denial. His room is a disaster. The clothes are not washed or hung up. I have no thoughts of packing a bag before hand. For some reason, none of this worries me, which is weird. I am the worlds best worrier. In any other situation, I would be stressed out of my mind, but I am completely stress-free about the fact that there is nothing done. I'm sure it will all work out... See the lack of stress? It's great. I am completely convinced thatI am going to end up having my baby in the car because I will be in denial that I am in labor. And, hey, if I do, I will have more to write about, right?

So this is life, and I am pretty pleased with it. I hope you enjoy reading.