I am a slob

Yup, that's right. S.L.O.B. 100% slob. It's in my nature and has always been there. It's officially becoming a real problem, though. DH and I are both tired of it, but with him being a neat freak at heart, it's bugging him even more. We're both lazy and our priorities include spending time together (ie. not cleaning), watching TV, going out with friends, traveling on weekends...basically anything but cleaning. We have grand intentions and will work really hard one weekend to get to the place we want the house to be at. The problem is, we won't finish. We'll leave one pile of things that need put away somewhere, a load of laundry in the dryer, a load of dishes in the dishwasher...something.

We have generated plans to deal with our clutter and bad habits in the past, but with things never getting all the way done, it's really difficult to implement those plans.

We just had a "Come to Jesus" talk about all of it. Of course, we discussed it for about 30 minutes before he had to leave to go to work. And of course I came away from the conversation feeling like it's all my fault. He really is neat at heart and will get motivated to clean much more often than I do. He also takes care of all of our outside work because of my allergies, so he feels like I don't do equal work inside while he's working outside. And I don't. I'll admit it. I'd rather do anything but clean and typically feel like there's something more important. And after our conversation I realized that the things I thought I did to even out the outside work just isn't enough. I go to the grocery (including meal planning) and take care of all of our money. But it isn't enough. I know that.

The point is, we need a plan of action. We're going to take some time off very soon so we can truly get EVERYTHING done and clean and start over. But once that's done, we need a real plan on keeping it that way. So help me, dear readers. Tell me what you do for all the areas of your house. I can tell you all the things we struggle with...it's going to be a long list.

The kitchen--keeping dishes done and getting the dishwasher emptied once they're washed
Dining room--where all our mail collects. We have a secretary desk that we planned on using for gathering some of the mail, but it eventually overflowed and I've got coupons and mail and all sorts of papers all over the dining room
Living room--dusting. How often? We do a *decent* job keeping the clutter in the living room in check. Most of the time.
Laundry--we currently divide laundry into light colors, dark colors, whites, and reds. It takes forever to get a full load of any of these. We do laundry every few weeks and end up doing 10 loads at a time. This can NOT happen once baby is here.
Bathrooms--I try to clean then whenever we're having company, but that's not nearly as often as I'm sure it should be. I guess that's just a matter of just doing it.

Yeah, we're slobs. And I'm now going to try to go do something about it. Problem is, I just don't know where to start--it's all very overwhelming. I guess the first thing I need to do is get off this computer! Hopefully next time I come back I have at least 10 comments with some tips--come, I have 35 subscribers via Google Reader and 7 followers...at least 10 of you have clean homes. I'm willing to bet that at least 40 of you have cleaner houses than ours. So please impart any knowledge you have. I'm begging!!!

Ultrasound Pics

(that last one is the spine)

Small Things

After yesterday's fairly depressing post, I thought I should take a step back and appreciate the happiness around me.

1) Book Club with wonderful women last night!
2) Eating yummy food at said book club....cheesecake, cake, unhealthy veggies, spinach dip...mmmm....
3) Seeing my parents tonight (and getting back DH's car)
4) Seeing college friends this weekend!
5) Being spooned by DH with his hand on my belly
6) Feeling our little GIRL squirming around in new places--I can now feel her up toward my belly button!
7) Having a delicious free breakfast this morning
8) Warmer weather! I'm perfectly happy with the 50s :)
9) DH kissing me on the cheek every morning when I drop him off at work and telling both P and me to have a good day
10) Still being able to wear my rings (and my shoes...but I'm trying not to jinx myself!)
11) The Big Show on 97.1 (I love Spiels and Hooley)
12) March Madness!
13) Chocolate, especially when it comes out of a plastic Easter egg
14) Finding a great parking spot, even after getting here late from breakfast
15) Infusium conditioner--makes my hair feel better than any other conditioner!

Self Esteem Issues

I've been feeling really down recently whenever I look in the mirror. I keep telling myself I should ENJOY being pregnant. But I'm just having a really hard time with what my body is doing. If it were just getting bigger, I could be okay, but it's not a cute little round baby bump that I see on so many others. In some clothes, it can look alright, but I've been avoiding clothes that actually show off the baby bump because they also show off my other bump. Then I put on the shirt I'm wearing today and immediately realized that I could EASILY pass as not pregnant at all. And that just sucks.

Damnit, I lost 90 pounds before getting pregnant. I really thought I could wear this baby well. And I even was somewhat okay with how I looked for the first 20 weeks, thinking that by 20 weeks my belly would round out and I'd be cute and pregnant. Here I am at 21 weeks and still just looking like I could be just fat.

Okay, enough whining. I'm sorry. I know I say this all the time, but it's really weighing on me and not allowing me to really enjoy this and say "hey look, I'm pregnant" and really makes me resent the skinny, pregnant bitches people around me who ARE cute and pregnant. It's making for a lot of sadness on my part, which sucks.

What an amazing experience...

Wow. That was just incredible! We got to see so much of our little baby. We got to see every perfect little thing. The spine. The brain. The heart. The umbilical cord. The kidneys. Two hands (with fingers!). Two feet. Two arms.

The very first thing we saw when the doctor turned on the ultrasound machine was two legs. At once. Which meant we were also looking in between them. Apparently our little one wasn't feeling too shy! Once she told us those were legs, we looked a bit closer. And saw...not much. She then pointed out the three lines. And that the thing we saw in between the legs was an umbilical cord. Not a penis. And she just completely non-chalantly said, "You've got yourself a little girl." Holy crap, I don't think it sunk in. Both DH and I said, "Did you just say what I think you said?" She did. Wow. A girl. We're both completely in shock as we'd convinced ourselves it was going to be a little boy!

We got to see the face from the front and see the adorable little chubby cheeks on her (her mom's). We also got to see the chin, which DH also swears is mine. She's laying in there in the pike position--folded completely in half--her legs and arms were right next to each other. The placenta looked great and is nowhere near being in a previa position, so that's good news. We got to see her little heart beating at 144 bpm and saw her brain. She showed us the three parts of the umbilical cord and that the blood was moving through it correctly. She showed us the kidneys and we even got a great view of the spine and all those vertebra! Everything measured good. Her overall size is measuring two days ahead (8/1/09--DH's grandma's birthday, actually), but they won't move the due date just based on that yet. Maybe when we get closer.

It still hasn't sunk in, 8 hours later. A girl. A healthy, beautiful little girl!

A girl. Tampons. Boyfriends. Prom dresses. A wedding.

Yes, we were getting ahead of ourselves, but it's a bit hard not to! A girl.

Wow. A girl. It looks like you, blog readers, as a whole, were wrong! The vote ended up 19 for boy and 11 for girl.

This time tomorrow...

...we will have gotten a good look at our little one and hopefully will know whether it's a boy or a girl!!! DH and I are ridiculously excited and really hoping not to jinx things! We're also hoping everything is okay with baby and hope to see all the good stuff.

Eek!!! Stay tuned :)

Twenty Weeks

To my dearest "P":

I can't believe that I'm already 20 weeks pregnant. Your daddy and I spend our days and nights thinking about you, talking to you, and talking about you and wondering what you'll be like! We worry that we'll find a way to screw you up and always try to make the absolute best decisions for you. We acknoweledge that we don't have all the answers and never will (although we won't tell you that for a very long time) but promise to do our very best to make you happy and healthy.

I've spent the last 16 weeks (because, really, I didn't find out I was pregnant until almost 4 weeks...) trying my best to make my body a comfortable home for you and to give you only the best. As much as I'd like to complain about my allergies and how awful I've felt some days, really, this pregnancy has been incredibly easy. I'm so blessed. Yes, at this point I realize I could be jinxing myself, but even if the next 20 weeks are rough, I know the first half of my pregnancy went fairly smoothly which is a blessing many women can only dream of.

I love feeling you moving around inside of me. Some days I know it may sound like I'm scolding you, but in reality I'm just startled by how big your movements are! It seems like you're getting stronger every day. I look forward to feeling every one of your kicks and pokes (at least at this point...haha!) and love knowing that you're doing okay (and enjoying the things Mommy is eating!).

In one week we're going to get our only really good look at you. Your daddy and I (as well as our friends and family) are praying that everything is okay and that you're just a healthy, happy baby inside mommy's tummy. Of course, once we get to see the important stuff, it would be really nice if we could see the goods, too, just so we can stop calling you "it"! Of course you know Mommy calls you "he" and Daddy calls you "she", so we're hoping to see who has been right these last 20 weeks.

Your daddy and I are hoping you'll hang tight in Mommy's belly for another 20 weeks and just grow to your biggest and strongest you can be. Even though we're impatient to meet you and get to know you, we'll continue to bond with you while you're safe inside before we bring you out into this scary world. You're worth the wait.

All my love,
Mommy

No longer ordering our food

DH has officially forbidden me from ordering our food any longer.

I found a coupon for an 11" BBQ chicken pizza for $4.99. DH thought this would be too small, so I got us some Pizza Bombs (deep fried pizza thingies) to go with it. While I was talking to the chick at the pizza place, I saw that some fresh-made chips were only $0.89, so I asked for some of those. When she read it back, she said a "small" pizza, which made me think it may not be enough food, so I also got some cheesy garlic bread.

I suppose I can see his point.

What if I hate my own child?

Totally irrational pregnant worry for the day--what if I hate/dislike my own child?

I love kids. I really, really do. But some kids' personalities just totally irk me and make me want to smack them upside the head. And I find it's mostly little boys between the ages of 5 and 10. Is that evil of me to say/think? What if my child (who we all know is going to be a boy...teehee) ends up being one of those kids and I'm truly annoyed by and dislike my own kid????

The quest for a soft pretzel

I crave soft pretzels. No, this isn't a pregnancy thing. It's just a "me" thing.

Growing up, we used to keep the frozen soft pretzels in the freezer. They were good.

But then I discovered the big pretzels like those that are served at sporting events. Those are phenomenal.

Then I had a butter-coated pretzel. Those are good. They're very good.

But some days I find myself craving those pretzels that you can, seemingly, only get at sporting events. And, therefore, I'm on a mission to find the pretzel without having to pay admission to a volleyball match or something.

They used to sell these (you know the ones...they hang on the metal spinny thing?) at concession stands in department stores. I remember my Hill's had them along with the cotton candy and sno-cones. Target is now the only store I know with a store-run concession stand and they have those "gourmet" pretzels (see butter-coated from before).

DH seems to think the buttery pretzels they serve at Sam's Club should suffice (this is a great substitution if you don't want to pay the exorbitant prices at Auntie Anne's! They're less than $1 apiece!), but they just don't. They're delicious, yes, but they aren't the same. So the search continues.

If anyone has a lead on where I can find these delicious items, please leave me a comment! (even if you just want to laugh at me you can leave a comment...lol)

Overwhelmed with Info: Car Seats and Strollers

Who would have thought that shopping for the thing that's going to save your child's life should you get into a car accident would be stressful and overwhelming?

Oh yeah.

It started out the same as our crib shopping. I was sitting on the couch reading Baby Bargains, telling DH about our different options as far as car seats. Even after hours of discussion, we haven't completely settled on whether to go with one convertible car seat instead of an infant seat and then a convertible car seat. We both agree that the convenience of the infant car seat would be nice so we can just keep the baby in the seat while going into stores, houses, etc. However, once we got to BRU, we discovered infant seats that can carry up to 32 pounds! That would get us to age 1, thereby eliminating the need for a convertible car seat at age one. We could just go to a forward-facing car seat.


Except there didn't seem to be any forward-facing car seats and the few that we saw weren't any sort of cost saving over the convertible car seat. So why pay the extra for the bigger infant seat?


Our options:


Our favorite infant seat (up to 22 pounds):

Ignore the colors. The seat is the Graco Snugride.

Our other favorite infant seat is the Chicco Keyfit

Graco also makes an infant seat that goes up to 32 pounds but is more expensive and, really, who is going to want to lug a baby around that's 32 pounds...plus the 8 pounds for the seat???

Then, somewhere between 6 months and a year, baby will move into a convertible car seat. Who knows which one of those we'll choose? But it seem inevitable, really.

You'd think that we're doing great here, even if we are a bit overwhelmed. Then we headed into the strollers. Ugh. A stroller *should* be really easy, but I don't think it is. They make these strollers that the infant seat can snap into, which seems great! This means you still don't have to take baby out of the infant seat to put them into a stroller to take a walk or walk the mall or something. But do we go with the entire travel system or just buy a stroller that the infant seat we choose fits into?

Then, on top of all of this, we *could* make the decision to get a convertible car seat like this:

This, above, is the Graco ComfortSport and is the most recommended convertible for infants.

If we went that route, we'd not have an infant seat to lug around, but we also wouldn't have to buy a new car seat when baby is 6-12 months old. We could get a stroller that is meant for a newborn to be able to lay in.

The stroller will depend entirely on what car seat options we go with.

Note: I started this entry 3/8/09 and am finishing on 3/12/09. Since then, some ladies on a message board I'm a part of have pretty much convinced me to start out with an infant seat. Now we just need to decide upon a brand. Of course, the new Baby Bargains comes out 4/25/09, so we might wait to get the new ratings from there before making a final decision. Or not (can you tell I'm getting impatient???).

Movement?

Over the last 3 1/2 days, I've been feeling lots of movement going on at the center of my stomach. For the first day or so, I was pretty sure it was just movement. Now I'm starting to wonder if it's baby... I first felt baby moving 3 weeks and 1 day ago, so I've been hoping to feel it again very soon. This feels completely different than what I felt then, though. The first time it felt like real kicks, like someone tapping on me from the inside. Now it really does just feel like my stomach digesting. It's been in basically the same spot for the last few days--right in the middle--whereas the first one was way over to the right. The last few days it's also happened probably 20 times a day, but the first time it just happened twice within a 5 minute span or so.

I'm hoping it's baby squirming around in there, but it just feels too frequent for me to be able to believe that that's what it is! If it keeps happening, though, I think I'll have a hard time writing it off as digestion.

(this isn't the post I referenced in my "Small Things" post--that's to come sometime soon...)

Small Things for this past weekend

1) Beer-battered pickles
2) Free Chipotle
3) Taking walks and getting outside Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday!
4) Seeing my best friend from college and catching up with other college friends
5) Taking small steps to being prepared for P (the baby, that is...)--see my next post for more on this
6) Snuggling with the hubby and spending all kinds of time with him
7) Going to bed before 10:30 both Friday and Saturday nights
8) Hand-me-down maternity clothes...thanks to good friends, I don't have to buy too much for myself!
9) Getting to wear sandals on Saturday!

200th Post!

In about 13 months, here I am, posting my 200th post. I'm so blessed by all of you. You may not be the most vocal readers, but it's nice to know that there are people out there listening to my neurotic, obsessive thoughts :)


It's amazing that since I started writing in late January I've gone through so much. I lost over 40 pounds, went through what I thought may end up being a fight with infertility (luckily it ended up being relatively short-lived), and am now 19 weeks pregnant! I was just reading my first post about the things I'd been doing to prepare for getting pregnant. I don't know what it would have changed, but if I'd only known then what I know now!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all, my readers, for being with me through the roller coaster that is TTC and now into this new journey of carrying and, eventually, having a baby!

A Poll!

I know a lot of people read my blog through Google Reader, so you probably don't see the front page very often. I've just added a poll asking what you think Bouncing Buckeye Baby's gender is (I almost typed "will be", but quickly reminded myself that the gender is already determined. Baby knows it...some other people *think* they know it...Mommy and Daddy just don't!!!). Please vote! We'll find out the results on Monday, March 23rd. Thanks!

Small Things (for 3/2/)

1) Fresh baked bread. Got motivated and used my bread maker last night...mmmm
2) My parents getting back from Florida safe and sound
3) The fact that my "fat" pants still work, even though the belly is getting bigger and I'm getting wider. I love maternity clothes and am a total clothes-horse, but am glad I have options.
4) A healthy, easy meal with good leftovers (cooked a whole chicken in the microwave in my Microwave Cooker from Tupperware, had a bag of steamed brown rice, had a bag of steamed broccoli with cheese sauce)
5) My new Snoogle. Yes, it makes me wake up sweaty, but it makes me so cozy.

Just say thank you, Jackass

I've had a few people tell me that I'm cute and pregnant. Of course, I always say "Thanks, but..." and fill in how I'm feeling fat or something. I need to stop and just say Thank You.

So if you've told me that and I haven't responded well--THANK YOU! :)

Information Gathering: Cribs

DH and I went "information gathering" yesterday. Please note that it was NOT a shopping trip, as DH will point out. We were just checking out the cribs in person.



After reading the chapter on cribs in Baby Bargains (this link is for the 7th edition--the 8th edition comes out next month and I'm going to pre-order it), I realized that I wanted to see what these cribs looked like in person. Was it worth paying $400 for these cribs or were they just as good as a $200 one?



The trip brought out quite a few discussions about our plans for the future. Do we want the furniture to stay with the child for their entire life? Or if/when baby #2 comes along, will we give the furniture from baby #1 to baby #2? Also, we currently have a low-quality dresser that I've used through college. I thought it would suffice for storage, along with the closet and a changing table. DH apparently thinks we'll need another dresser and should get one that matches a convertible crib so the child will have a dresser and bed set to use at least until they graduate college. But that means we'll have to buy another set for baby #2.



We liked the drop-side cribs (it seems to pretty much be either drop-side OR convertible...not both), but are leaning toward convertible and getting a nice set so that we don't have to invest in another bed later. Of course, part of me thinks we could invest in one crib, then get bedroom suites for the kids as they get older.



So much confusion and we haven't even gotten to the brands!



Speaking of brands, though, we liked this one:

It's a convertible by Jardine. It's a good price and felt really sturdy and looked nice. The reviews are mixed and Baby Bargains assigned it a B+ (or A-....). Of course, Baby Bargains gave the matching dresser and changing table an F. *sigh* So that may eliminate that choice, but I'm not sure. We might get the crib and try to find something else that matches.

Of course, we might also look into Amish-made furniture. We need to go price that sort of thing. I know it'd be sturdy and well-made. A friend of mine got a convertible that was Amish-made.

I'm sure there will be more updates as we consider other items!

Goodbye, Old Friend

I have officially lost my waist.

I liked my waist. Even when I was bigger, I had a waist, making me look a bit smaller than I was. But now it's gone. Totally, completely gone. I go straight down when you look at me from the front. When I turn sideways, I barely have a bump, but from the front I look tubby. Damnit. Doesn't help with the whole self-image thing.

It's all for a good cause and I understand that. I'm just impatiently waiting for my belly to round out and to finally look pregnant to people who don't already know.