Friday Fill-in and 5QF

1. I always feel like I’m  _________________ years old, but in reality, I’m _________________ .  Sometimes these fill in the blank questions are hard to answer.  I’m 31, and I feel like I’m 31 and I’m glad to be 31.
2. I wish my family understood better when I tell them that being a military spouse isn’t easy.  I’ve had my mom tell me more than once that I “knew what I was getting in to when I married Mark”, when in actuality, I had NO clue what I was getting in to.  That’s like saying you know exactly what it’s going to be like being a parent before you have kids... 
3. If you saw me when I’m sitting on the couch, painting my nails, you’d think I was a total girly-girl, but if you saw me when I sometimes get tired of shopping after 10 mins, you’d think I was a tomboy through-and-through.
4. I feel like I’m in a totally different universe when I’m in a gym…  They intimidate me.
5. In honor of this being MFF #60… 60 months ago  (exactly 5 years ago, so September 30, 2006) I lived in Pensacola, FL  and my life was totally different because I’d been married 3 months, was in the process of selling my horse (not fun), worked a job I didn’t like all that much and we didn’t have Sadie or Abbie yet.

1. Do you apologize to your kids if you're wrong?  Yes, I do.  I make her apologize when she does something bad/ wrong, so I do the same thing.  You lead by example.

2. Do you have a class ring, letterman's jacket, or similar obscenely priced high school "must have"?  No, I don’t think I have anything like that.  I wasn’t much into “trendy” stuff in high school, and I’m still not.

3. If you could be one age for the rest of your life, what age would you choose?  I guess I would say 31 (my current age), with my 21 year old body.  =)

4. What is your favorite (unused) baby name?  For girls, I like Caitlyn and Anabelle.  For boys, I like Benjamin and Max and I’m still thinking of others.

5. If you could make your child like something what would it be?  Currently, I would make her like to share.  For when she’s older, I would love to give her the curiosity to see other cultures and love to travel.
Happy Friday!

28 week appointment

Last week I had my 28 week appointment.  I was nervous about it since it was my glucose test.  I thought that I had to drink the stuff and then sit there for an hour and then have my appointment.  But I drank the stuff and then had my appointment during the hour wait.

So they always weigh you first thing.  I gained 11lbs this month…  ELEVEN?!?!  O.M.G.  I about died…  And then I about cried.  And THEN she took my blood pressure, which naturally was high because I was a tad bit worked up about gaining 11lbs in one month.  I hadn’t wanted to gain 11lbs the rest of my pregnancy and I gained it in one month?  Ugh.  My clothes aren’t fitting any tighter, but my belly is definitely getting bigger.  And I hadn’t been eating the best for the previous week+ since we’d been out of town and eating out every meal.  But 11lbs?  Ugh.  Not good.

My midwife and a student midwife came in for my appointment and I ended up talking with them for a good half hour.  They were mildly concerned about the weight gain and my high blood pressure, but since my bp wasn’t that high and it wasn’t consistently high, they were okay with it.

I talked to them about quite a few different things.  The weight gain, having large babies, his position, giving birth to breech babies, my appointments once I get to Italy, perineal massage, etc.  I feel like I got a bunch of good info from them and they were very reassuring.   They measured my belly again and dug around in there to determine his position, which hurt like HECK.  But he’s still measuring over 2 weeks ahead of schedule and he was head down at the time of my appointment.  We listened to his heartbeat, which was good and strong as usual.

I waited in the lobby for my hour to be up after my appointment with the midwives.  Mark actually called during that time so it was nice to talk to him for a bit.  Then they called me back to do the finger stick to check my glucose and hemoglobin counts.  They said that my glucose had to be 151 or below and the hemoglobin had to be 11 of above.  My glucose ended up being 150, and my hemoglobin was 10.5.  So I BARELY passed the glucose test and I didn’t pass the hemoglobin test.  I’m not 100% sure what that means, but they didn’t really say anything much about it besides to make sure I’m taking my prenatals.

I have another appointment next week and that is my last one while I’m still in the States.  If I’ve gained a bunch more weight, I don’t even know what I’m going to do besides stop eating all together.  I tried to make my appointments in Italy for when I get back, but they won’t let me do that until they have all my records, which I’ll take back with me.  I did find out that they don’t go to bi-weekly appointments in Italy until 36 weeks, so that kind of stinks.  I’m just hoping if I’m still measuring weeks ahead there that they’ll do an ultrasound to see exactly how big he is.

I’m getting to the point in my pregnancy where I like being pregnant.  I’ve been feeling him a lot, which is fun and its a constant reminder that our lives are going to change quite a bit pretty soon.  I can’t wait for Mark to get home so he can feel his baby boy moving around too.  Every once in a while Abbie will come up and ask to feel him.  I’m still not sure if she’s actually felt him move though because she’s never felt my belly when he’s really in there womping around.  But I love it when he’s active and I’m ultra-aware of our second baby. 

My ribs and lungs do feel a little cramped right now and I have a hard time taking a deep breath sometimes.  I have no clue where my stomach is located right now, but when I lay down, I do get pretty bad reflux.  Last night he was in there sideways and kept me up quite a bit of the night because I couldn’t get comfortable.  I could feel his head pushing out the side of my belly and it was weird to lay on my side and feel him right there and then feel him kicking my other side.  But I could breathe a little easier so that was nice.  I like to lay on my back though, but since you’re not supposed to do that when you’re this far along, I’m constantly trying to rearrange my pillows to make sure one side is higher than the other.

I’m interested and nervous to see what OB care will be like at Aviano.  It’s a little scary that I’ll only have a couple appointments there, most likely with different doctors, before we have this little guy.  Doesn’t give you much time to get to know your doctor and there is a possibility that someone I’ve never met will be delivering him.  But that was also a possibility with Abbie’s birth and things turned out fine with her!

Slowly but surely

Today I feel like I was fairly productive.  Thanks to my mom’s help, I got the 12 boxes I already had packed mailed off to Italy.  Considering the first two boxes I mailed cost me $140 for shipping and insurance, I was pleasantly surprised when the 12 I mailed today only cost me $301 to ship.  I didn’t insure them all, and I didn’t send them all priority, so that probably helped.  However, I do have more than a few left to mail.  I have four boxes that are partially/mostly full, laying around the house and I’m finding more and more things to add to them.  I still have a LOT of Abbie’s toys to pack up though, but I’ll probably wait until right before we leave to pack the majority of those up so she can still play with them while we’re here.

I also spent an hour and a half on the phone with our bank.  Mark and I ordered a 2012 Volvo XC90 that will be delivered to Italy the week Mark gets home (hopefully).  So I was getting the loan set up and checking on insurance rates (since our insurance is through our bank).  It took MUCH longer than I expected, but we’re mostly done and I just have to confirm a few things with Mark before I pull the trigger all the way.  It’s a big relief, though, to have most of that behind me and another major item checked off my list.  It’s amazing to me, that I can be in the US and Mark can be in Afghanistan, and we can order a car from Sweden, through a dealership in Germany, to be delivered to Italy, all through the Internet.  Technology is really amazing at times.  And truth be told, it’s probably at least 5 times easier doing it this way than doing everything from Italy.  And the best news is that our insurance will actually go DOWN, even though the new car is 6 years newer and worth over twice as much as our old car.  Volvo’s have incredible safety ratings though and the insurance agent told me that people tend to drive new cars more conservatively than they do older cars so that could have something to do with it also.  But our insurance premiums will go down about $25/month once we get the new car.  Score!!

In other news, Sadie has been acting odd again.  A few weeks ago she had a day where she just wasn’t moving much, which makes me worry about her back having issues again.  She was more subdued for a day or so and then she was fine again.  This morning she was fine, and now she’s just laying around and not moving much again.  I’ve done the reflex test on her hind legs and they’re both about average for her, so I’m hoping she’ll snap out of it this time like she did last time.  Honestly, I just don’t have time to deal with her losing all function of her back legs again…  I really hope that doesn’t happen again right before we leave…

Things are slowly but surely getting done.  I keep adding to my list of things to do, but at least I’m getting a few things checked off also.  It’s nice to see a little progress.

Planner

I am very much a planner by nature.  Love having a schedule, and writing things down and making lists.  I have everything on my phone, but I also like to have a “hard copy” to flip through to write every minute detail in.

I saw this life planner on another military spouse’s blog and checked out the website she provided, and I fell in love.  So I emailed Mark the link and told him that was what I wanted for my birthday, and that’s what he got me.

I love this planner because it has LOTS of space.  It has monthly views and weekly views with morning, day and night spaces.  Plus it has weekly goals lists and to do lists, which is really right up my alley.

It has an area in the front to list all your special occasions and then stickers in the back to put on individual days, and also lots of area for notes and numbers.

You can also have them put photographs on it, which I will probably do next year, but I didn’t want to put a family picture on it for a 2012 planner and then have a baby in December and have him not be on it.  I wish Mark would have put a picture of us on the front of it, but oh well.   My 2013 planner will have a picture on it.  =)

They also have really cute Christmas cards, but there is no way in heck I’m spending $2.25 PER CARD.  Maybe someday when I’m made of money I’ll do that, but for now that’s out of my price range.
I’ve had lots of fun filling up my planner so far.  Hopefully it’ll hold up through 16 months of being drug all over the place and used a lot!  I’ll let you know!

Feeling overwhelmed.

Moving is always somewhat stressful, and even though this isn’t an official PCS move for me, I’m still moving back to Italy after living with my parents for 6 months.  And I seem to have accumulated a TON of stuff.  This was planned though.  I knew I was going to buy baby boy’s wardrobe through size 2T if we found out he was a boy, which he obviously is.  And I also stocked up on clothes for Abbie for the next year and a half since it’s much more fun to shop in person than it is online.  So the majority of these boxes are clothes.  But I also bought quite a bit of fabric to use over the next 2 years since buying fabric in Italy is very expensive and the selection is extremely slim, so again, I’d end up buying it online anyway.  And since I didn’t bring any maternity clothes with me, I’ve bought quite a few of those also, so I’m sending back my non-maternity clothes in boxes.
I’ve shipped 2 (huge) boxes home, one of them was the double stroller, the other full of baby clothes.  I have 12 more boxes (pictured above) that I need to get to the post office asap so they will be there by the time we get to Italy.  And the stressful part is that I have quite a few boxes left to pack and get ready to send.  I’m numbering them all and writing down what I have in each of them so I’ll know what I’m missing if any of them don’t show up in Italy.
The stressful part is that I am SUPER busy from now until the weekend before we leave.  Between OB appointments, dentist appointments, vet appointments, hair appointments, dinners with friends, taking pictures for people, finishing a quilt, etc, I have something going on every. single. day.  Which is good!  It’s great really, because the time will fly by, but it’s stressful because it’s a lot to do in a short amount of time.  We fly out in 18 days.  So I’m trying to visit with family and friends as much as possible before I leave, and also get everything ready to go.
I’m also stressed about everything I have to do after we get to Italy, but I’ll save that for another post.  =)  On the brighter side, it’s looking like fall here and I absolutely love it!  The cooler weather, the changing leaves, the wearing warm clothes.  I can’t get enough of it and it definitely helps my mood!

Friday Fill-in and 5QF

1. My favorite thing that happened this week was seeing my friend Elyse and getting our little girls together!!  SO CUTE!!
2. Find a penny, pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck. (Sorry, too lazy/tired to think of anything creative for this.)
3. Autumn is officially here and my favorite part of the season is my husband is coming home!!!!  But fall is always my favorite season because I love wearing jeans and sweatshirts, the crisp air and the changing leaves.
4. One of the things I’d like to do before winter arrives is ….one?  There are about 8 billion things I need to do before winter (or baby boy) arrives..  That’s a whole separate post.
5. I –would/would not/might– be willing to participate in MilSpouse Secret Santa.  I did it last year, and it was fun, but I’ll probably skip it this year, only because I’m due with baby #2 on Dec 13 and I don’t want to commit myself to anything else right now.

1. Dream job...realistic and completely unrealistic.  As cliché as it sounds, I’m doing my dream job right now – raising my kid(s).  And I never thought this would be my dream job.  In fact, I thought I’d be bored out of my mind staying at home with a little one.  But I absolutely love it and I love seeing all of her firsts and teaching her things and watching her grow up right before my eyes.  I’m excited for #2 to arrive.  But outside of being a SAHM, I would love to be a marriage counselor or any kind of counselor really.  Maybe someday.
2. Do you fart in front of your significant other?  Yes, and I’m sure that’s one of the many things he misses about me right now.  (JK!)  But I distinctly remember the days where I was afraid to even pee if I thought there was any chance of him possibly hearing it through the closed bathroom door.  (Cuz peeing isn’t natural or something???)  Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately, depending on who’s viewpoint you’re seeing), those days are LONG gone.  =)
3. What's the furthest you've ever traveled from home? How far and where was it?  When we lived in OK, we traveled to Europe and the farthest East we got in Europe was Innsbruck, Austria I think.  I’m not exactly sure how far it is..  But I’m pretty far from home now too!  (Live in Italy, but staying with my parents in IL.)
4. How do you celebrate birthday for your kids? Family only or friends? ... Alternate for those without kiddos: How did you celebrate birthdays as a kid?  For her first birthday, we’d just moved to Italy and didn’t know anyone well enough to have a party.  So it was just the 3 of us.  For her 2nd birthday, we had a small get together at my parents house with friends and family, but her daddy was deployed.  Not sure what we’ll do for her 3rd birthday.  I don’t remember what we did when I was really young, but I remember having birthday parties with my friends in middle and high school.
5. Fave thing about fall?  Again, my husband is coming home!!!!  I’m seriously so excited my heart races just thinking about it and I can’t sleep at night.  And I love Thanksgiving and carving pumpkins, although I really don’t like Halloween all that much…  But the weather, the leaves, the drinking hot cocoa and apple cider.  Lighting candles, being warm inside when it’s cold outside, snuggling under blankets.  I LOVE fall!

In the front yard

I’ve been wanting to practice using my camera on full manual mode with my 50mm lens, so a few weeks ago I took Abbie and the dogs out in the front yard and tried to take a few pictures of them running around.  Let me tell you, it’s much easier to practice on stationary objects, that’s for sure.  But I still had fun and got a few alright shots.

I just love her (not so) little feet. 

Since Ollie is usually “sitting like a pig”, as Abbie puts it, he’s much easier to take photos of.  All my shots of Sadie were just a ball of blurry fur since Sadie has two speeds – asleep or running like a bat out of hell and when she’s outside, she’s usually in the later mode.

Abbie just loves Maddie and Maddie is a really good sport about Abbie getting all up in her grill.

Oliver, however, is not at all a good sport.  I happened to snap this picture during the half a second that he didn’t have his nose all wrinkled up at her.  Abbie is completely oblivious to Ollie’s warning signs though and she’s still all over him more than any other dog.

I like how this photo turned out.

Pregnancy update

I feel a little guilty since I posted a ton of blogs when I was pregnant with Abbie and I’ve barely posted any with this little guys pregnancy.  People ask me how far along I am, and I really have to think about it based on when my last appointment was and how far along I was at that appointment.  It’s pretty bad.  With Abbie I could pretty much tell you the week and day of my pregnancy.  I guess I have a tad bit more on my mind this time around, but I still feel guilty.

Overall this pregnancy has been good.  MY SPD still comes and goes in spurts and lately, even during the “good” spurts, I’ve been having issues at night, mainly when I try to get up in the middle of the night to pee.  I have a hard time getting to a sitting position without shooting pains, and then once I actually stand up, usually within the first step or two my hips/pelvis do this horrendous “crunch” and then it’s a little bit easier to walk, but still kinda painful.  I really would like to know what exactly is “crunching”.  Lately I’ve been having some bad episodes of round ligament pain.  Usually they’re short-lived and only happen when I try to roll over at night, but I don’t remember having this at all with Abbie.  However, I’ll take the round ligament pain over the migraines I had with her any day.  I’ve recently started getting reflux, which I also had with Abbie.  It’s pretty annoying and gross, but not terrible.

Other than that, not much is going on.  I have my glucose test at my next appointment on the 23rd, and I’m kinda nervous about it.  Not that I’m really afraid anything is going to be wrong, but I’m good at worrying, so I do.  I’ll be glad when it’s over.  I’ve been monitoring my blood pressure at home, and usually it’s pretty good – ranging from 110/60-ish to 140/80ish.  Not perfect, but not bad either.

I’m excited for this little guys arrival, but it seems so far away at this point.  I feel like a billion things are going to happen between now and then, which there are, so it’s kind of easy to not think about the fact that we’ll have another kiddo in a few short months.  I feel like I’ve been more emotional during this pregnancy, but I’m not sure if that’s because Mark is deployed or the fact that living with my parents can be pretty stressful, or because I’m pregnant, or some combination of the three.  I’m excited to be pregnant with Mark actually around, so I’m very excited about next month.

Oh, and I’ve found lots of cute boy clothes in the past few months, which has made the shopping for him a little more fun.  I’ve been finding lots of “moose” clothing, so its fun to get him that stuff since that’s Mark’s call sign.  He’ll be well dressed, I think.  I can’t wait to get pictures of him in some of the outfits I got him.  Hopefully Mark will approve of all the clothes I bought for him.

28 weeks down, 12 to go!

Abbie and Lilly

While we were in Kansas City for my parents conference, my mom Abbie and I took a 3 hr drive to Wichita to meet my good friend, Elyse, and her daughter, Lilly at the Wichita Zoo.  Elyse and I worked together when Mark and I lived in Oklahoma, and Elyse gave birth to Lilly the day after we moved to Phoenix.  So Elyse and I were pregnant together the majority of my pregnancy.  Abbie and Lilly are a month and a half apart in age.  (Lilly is older.)

The initial meeting and checking each other out.

It’s funny because Elyse and I are obviously very good friends.  She’s one of my best friends and we’ve kept in touch pretty well since I moved from Enid, over 2.5 years ago.  But I would say Elyse and I have differing views on quite a few things, which, in my opinion, is what makes her fun.  Because we can discuss things, disagree, argue, whatever, but we’re still friends in the end.  I would say that our parenting theories are pretty close though.    Abbie and Lilly have VERY different personalities, which is amazing to me since they’re so young!  I guess I haven’t been around many babies and toddlers, but it was fun to see their different reactions to everything, since they were almost opposite of each other.  But like their moms, they got along really well and I know Abbie just loved Lilly.  Today (a day later) we were at Noodles & Company and Abbie wandered up to some lady eating, and by the time I got to her (about 20 seconds),  Abbie was telling this lady all about her friend Lilly.  And she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her Grandpa all about Lilly. 

Abbie has a stuff rhino that she sleeps with every night and takes everywhere with her, so she was super excited to see the rhino at the zoo.

This hippo was VERY entertaining!  I took bunches of pictures of him and Abbie got a real kick out of him too.  Hippos make funny noises.

Checking out the tigers.  Lilly preferred to view them from a distance while Abbie was completely fearless and ran right up to a tiger on the other side of the glass.   Crazy kid!

Abbie particularly loved the gorillas.  She didn’t want to leave the little statues of them and she loved watching them swing around their enclosure.  She got a little bit freaked out because I was picking her up to put her on a bench right next to the glass and this HUGE gorilla swung down from the ceiling and landed about 2 feet on the other side of the glass from her.  She got really stiff and her heart was racing, but she stood there and watched him.

I think the girls had the most fun playing with each other while we were eating lunch.  They were SO cute together!

It was SO good to see Elyse again, and kind of surreal to see our little girls together.  Elyse and I spent HOURS talking about our babies before they were born and discussing everything under the sun about giving birth and raising kids and all that fun stuff.  And now our girls are 2.5 years old and running around and talking and playing together.  I think we were both just as excited to get our girls together as we were to actually see each other.

The girls had a great time on the tram, and the picture in the middle is my favorite picture of Abbie of the day.

Abbie was teaching Lilly how to sign “I love you”.

The girls also had fun running around the penguin exhibit.

Hugging goodbye.

We had a great time at Wichita with Elyse and Lilly.  It was so good to reconnect with Elyse and to get our little girls together.  I’m not sure there are many things cuter than little girls meeting for the first time.  I’ve heard so much stuff about Lilly from Elyse, so it was fun to meet her.  She’s such a cute and sweet little thing.  I really wish we lived in Enid still so our girls could play together often, and so I could see Elyse too.  Hopefully we’ll get to see each other again before another 2.5 years pass.