New Trimester, New Toy...

We’re officially in the 2nd trimester, baby!! (And everyone else…) I had another doctor’s appointment last week and set the ultrasound date for February 8th, so the countdown is on to find out the sex of this little nugget! The doctor said everything looks good and the baby is “growing nicely” (AKA: your belly is getting larger by the minute), so we are really thankful for that!

In other news, I have temporarily (or maybe permanently) become the latest victim of the “PS3 Neglected Wife Syndrome”. Sam decided to combine his birthday & Christmas (his “birthristmas”, as he calls it) money to buy himself a new toy over the break, resulting in hours and hours and HOURS of this…

Of course, Zoey’s not complaining because Sam is way too entranced with his new toy to make her get off the couch. Let me clarify, Z is NOT allowed on the furniture, but by the time I get in there she’s all cuddled up and asleep on Sam, and I just don’t have the heart to make her get down when she looks so cute and cuddly. Plus, I’m buttering her up for the real bombshell to drop in about 6 months when she most likely becomes a permanent “outside/garage” dog. That is going to cause some serious drama, I’m afraid, but that’s the rule. Babies first. Doggies second.

I’m not sure if anyone is interested in reading the continuation of my pregnancy journal entries or not, but I’ll post a few more entries below if you want to take a peek…and if not, just leave me a comment and tell me these are incredibly boring and I’ll stop posting them. Deal? Deal.

November 2, 2009 (9:30 AM)

Dear Baby,

I woke up this morning and realized that the test was REALLY positive, yesterday REALLY happened, and you are REALLY growing inside of me right now! It still hasn’t all set in completely, but I did call this morning to make my 8 week appointment (set for December 2nd), which was the first time I told someone else that I was “pregnant”. Oh my goodness…it was such a strange feeling to actually say those words out loud. Of course I’m worrying about every little thing I do right now (what I eat, how I sleep, how I move, what I wear, etc.) and wondering if I could POSSIBLY be hurting you, but my logical side knows that you are just a tiny little miraculous ball of cells right now that is completely protected deep inside of me. (You’re welcome, by the way, for the extra padding surrounding you that is making your environment extra cushiony and comfortable right now. I did manage to lose 18 pounds BEFORE you took up residence inside of me, but there is definitely still plenty of insulation there for you to enjoy!)
I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings, but you just don’t feel real yet! I’m SO excited about you and am SO looking forward to the next 9 months and then the rest of your life with us, but it’s all just taking a little while to sink in. That 8 week appointment seems SO far away right now, but I know it will be here before either of us knows it! Until then, you just make yourself comfortable, use anything you need from me to continue developing properly & healthfully, and know that you have two parents who cannot express how excited they are to bring you into this world!

I love you already,
Mommy

P.S. You have already made me pee 4 times this morning, and it’s only 11:45. On the plus side, my sense of smell is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before! I can smell things so far away I don’t even know where they are coming from...

P.S.S. You REALLY love Puppy Chow (human kind, not dog kind). I’m afraid I’m going to gain 5 pounds before I even hit the month mark from this dang Puppy Chow alone! Oh, but you’re SO worth it! At least you don’t like something gross like brussel sprouts or something…

P.S.S.S. The BabyCenter website I have visited seven times today (I’m having a bit of trouble staying focused) says that you are the size of a poppy seed. I love you, my precious little poppy seed.

November 3, 2009 (1:46 PM)

Dear Lay’s Kettle Cooked Barbeque Potato Chips,
Thank you for temporarily satisfying my craving for something salty, crunchy, AND sweet. I’m sorry that I devoured about 3 servings of you in approximately 1 ½ minutes. Apparently it’s not a good idea to wait until I’m STARVING to go home for lunch. Well, that and the fact that I’ve been avoiding you like the plague for the last 2 ½ months because of Weight Watchers. Lucky for you, this baby doesn’t care for WW at all. In fact, it’s encouraging me to eat you. So I did...

Feeling Crunchy,
Crislyn

November 4, 2009 (11:24 AM)

Dear Admissions Refrigerator,

Thank you for having Sprite! I think that you’ve always had Sprite, but until this week I really hadn’t noticed. Apparently the hormones are making me crave Sprite, which is perfect since I can actually drink it! Thanks again.

Thirstily,
Crislyn

November 4, 2009 (11:25 AM)

Dear File Cabinet Drawer,
Thank you for being such a great keeper of the Saltine crackers I have secretly stashed away. Items like saltine crackers (especially in combination with Sprite, as mentioned above) are dead giveaways that something sneaky is going on with a lady in her mid-twenties, so I really appreciate the fact that you are so great at concealing my secret snack. Sadly, we’re going to have to keep this little secret between us for at least 2 more months…

Mums the Word,
Crislyn

Have a lovely day, my blog friends! :)

The Rumors Are True...

Hi friends!

Well, after 2 months of suspenseful waiting and secret-keeping, and a scattering of VERY few and far between blog posts, here is the post I’ve REALLY been dying to write since November 1st. The rumors are true, WE’RE HAVING A BABY!!!

Sam and I decided to wait until after the first trimester was almost over to break the news to the world, and now that I’m less than a week away, what better way to tell the world than on our blog?! Now that we’ve started telling people, I just can’t seem to stop myself from telling everyone I see! Friends, neighbors, strangers, you name it! :)

Here are the facts: I’m 13 weeks pregnant right now. My due date is currently July 13th--yay for July birthdays! (Mine is the 25th) We are planning to find out the sex of the baby around 18 weeks…probably right around Valentine’s Day. (Do you seriously think my control freakishness has the patience to wait until this baby is born to find out how to decorate the nursery/what clothes to buy/etc.?) I’ve been a little sick here and there, but nothing too unbearable. Sam and I are SUPER excited, as well as a little scared about being first-time parents, but we know that we have a great support system around us to coach us through the process and give us wonderful parenting advice!

Now, I’ve already started getting a few requests for belly pics. There’s not a LOT to show yet, other than a tummy that looks like it ate a few too many Christmas cookies and fudge (which it did), but I’ll go ahead and post a few pictures for my curious friends who would like to see the difference…

5 weeks

13 weeks

Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to blog about this for a while, I immediately started keeping a little diary of my early pregnancy days, so I’ll post a couple entries from that below for those of you still reading…

November 1, 2009 (7:53 AM)

Dear Equate Pregnancy Test,

You are a cheap piece of crap and I hate you. You tried to trick me this morning by not showing anything for the first 1 ½ minutes and then all of a sudden decided to show a VERY subtle, faint blue line in the pregnancy window. Given the fact that I was still half asleep, it took me about 3 minutes to actually decide if there was even a line there before awakening Sam from a deep slumber to make him come in the bathroom to verify. I decided your cheapness caused the blue dye to inaccurately bleed through, so I decided to return to Wal-Mart later in the day to buy a “real” pregnancy test. You stink.

Disregards,
Crislyn

November 1, 2009 (2:04 PM)

Dear Brain,

Where have you gone? Apparently all it takes is one “sort of positive” pregnancy test to make you flee to the hills. This morning I forgot to put in my contacts before church, and I didn’t even realize it until we were in the auditorium and I realized I couldn’t see anything on stage or the screen. After church, I laid down for a nap before the baby shower I was planning to go to. Of course I forgot to set an alarm, and I woke up with an incredibly deep sleep line across the whole left side of my face. I’m not joking, it was like the Great Divide. And then I walked out of the house to go to the shower without the baby gift. Or my contacts. Luckily I remembered right as I was backing out of the driveway, so I came back in the house, put in contacts, and grabbed the gift. Only to realize I had no idea where I had put my purse. It was still in the car. Apparently “pregnancy brain” is no joke...

Thoughtlessly,
Crislyn

November 1, 2009 (4:07 PM)

Dear Clearblue Easy Pregnancy Test,

Oh my goodness. You are ALMOST solely responsible for the slight panic attack I had in the bathroom about 3 minutes ago. (Well, you and the husband who did this to me…haha.) I didn’t REALLY expect you to tell me what you did, so when the 3 minute timer went off and we walked in the bathroom to see the results, you can understand why I nearly passed out. Not that I’m NOT excited, I just was not expecting you to be so DIRECT. Thank you for being easy to read though, you saved me the extra stress of trying to decipher what the lines (faint, blue, pink) meant. I will take many pictures of you and save you until I decide it’s been long enough and I need to throw you away since I peed on you.

Respectfully yours,
Crislyn

**Note: I currently cannot find the pictures we took with the positive pregnancy test, but I'm sure you can use your imagination to picture it...white stick, word "pregnant" undeniably clear, and 2 ecstatic/surprised/excited/slightly scared new soon-to-be parents smiling hugely at the camera!

So there you have it, folks. Baby Ward is on his/her way!! :) I’ll try to update more regularly about the pregnancy (and other non-pregnancy related things for those of you not as interested in ONLY reading about the baby I’m growing) now that I can talk about it openly.

Random Fact:  I have been LOVING me some pickles.  Not just any pickles, they have to be of the Claussen variety...that's the only way to go.  But still, I've been loving them.  Want proof?

Yes, I'm drinking the pickle juice out of the jar with a straw.  But really only for the picture...I honestly only took a tiny sip.  (I didn't want to pickle the baby!! :))  Stay warm out there in this frigid, arctic weather…

I know, I know...

I feel the need to post really quickly just to acknowledge the fact that I haven't posted in almost 3 weeks.  I blame the holidays.  And the cold weather that is making our internet at home kind of spotty.  (Who knew that could even happen?!)  And my laziness in general.  I know the blogging world traditionally has "Random Thoughts Thursdays", and I THOUGHT about posting yesterday, but obviously that didn't happen.  So here are my Random Thoughts for Friday:

1.  I try not to be negative on my blog (and generally in life), but I need to just take a quick minute to complain about how much I HATE the Kay Jeweler's commercials.  They are so incredibly cheesy and stupid they make me gag whenever they come on.  And I'm fully aware that it's completely unhealthy that a dumb commercial could stir up such feelings of hatred and loathing inside of me, but that specific commercial with the the couple in the storm just KILLS me.  I seriously want to punch the TV whenever it comes on.  I told Sam if he ever buys me anything from Kay Jewelers it's going back.  Ugh.

2.  The heater at our house (as well as the internet) has NOT been dealing well with the cold weather.  Sam and I have spent about 50% of our time at home the past few days taking turns messing with the thermostat, checking to see if warm air is still blowing out, putting on additional layers of clothing, and subsequently shedding said layers of clothing when the stinking thing DOES decide to come out in full force.  Let's all just keep our fingers crossed that the sweet little heater just keeps on truckin' so we don't wake up as popsicles anytime in the near future...

3.  I think the holiday Hershey's kisses are just fabulous.  I currently have 3 varieties in the candy dish in my office and they look so pretty because they are all different colors!  I would have to rank them in the following order: 1) Chocolate Cherry,  2) Mint Truffle, and 3) Candy Cane.  Candy Cane only gets voted last because it's white chocolate, and everyone knows white chocolate is not REALLY chocolate.  And the Chocolate Cherry kisses are quickly dwindling away, thanks to a certain co-worker who shall remain nameless :)  Does it sound like I'm kind of obsessed with chocolate?  Why yes, yes it does.  And I am.  Here's a picture of my yummy candy dish for your viewing pleasure...

All of you blog friends at OC, feel free to stop by anytime and get you some of this chocolate kiss yumminess!  Stay warm out there and I'll try to post again before 2010.  No promises though...

Falling Into Fall...

For the past several weeks, I've been trying to get Sam to get out in the front yard and help me rake up the plethera of leaves that have been accumulating into 3 foot drifts in various sections of our yard.  We only actually have ONE tree in our front yard (compared with the 4 in the back...) but we are at the end of a hill with a lovely fence (insert slightly sarcastic tone) bordering our front yard, so I'm pretty sure our yard catches about 95% of the leaves that fall from ALL of the trees on our entire street. Sam kept saying he wanted to wait until "the leaves are all done falling" but I just couldn't stand not seeing my flowers, shrubs, yard anymore, so Sunday afternoon I got out there with the rake and he reluctantly joined me.  I forgot to take a picture of what the yard looked like before the raking commenced, but I guarantee you that you could see NOTHING but leaves on every level of our flower bed. 

Here's a picture of the MOUNTAIN we raked up just in the front of the front yard (we haven't even touched the side of the house or the backyard yet).  Please note the look of sheer elation on Sam's face.

Right after I took the picture above, my man-child husband's attitude shifted 180 degrees as he realized that he had an incredibly huge pile of leaves to use as a stunt prop.  And this is what ensued...

The Undisturbed Pile (and the aforementioned "lovely fence")

Sam's Dive #1: The Blur (I took the picture too late...)

Sam's Dive #2: The Burrough

Sam's Dive #3: The Pointed-Toes Olympian Dive

Sam's Dive #4: The Belly Buster (action shots on the iPhone aren't great...)

Sam lounging in his leaf heaven...

Zoey being really confused about what is going on in her front yard...

At the end of the day, we did manage to bag up over FIFTEEN bags of leaves before it got dark, leaving the front yard in a much more appealing state than before.  And I've decided that although we don't have kids yet, sometimes being married to Sam is like living with a big kid.  And I love it.  He is the best at making not-so-fun tasks a lot more fun than they ever should have been! :)

It's a Chili Night!

Okay, I have to admit I'm not really a huge fan of cold weather.  I'm definitely more of a summer girl (which I credit to the fact that I was born in July, am in love with summer vacation, and am obsessed with the beach), so when the weather gets cold I'm usually not very thrilled about it.  Today was no exception, although I decided to make the most of a cold and dreary day by making a warm bowlful of yumminess for dinner. 

And considering there's not a lot of excitement to update on right now, I thought I'd share the recipe with you!  It's called White Chicken Chili and I got the recipe from one of my favorite Kansans in the world about 5 years ago when I was still in college.  (Oh wow, that just reminded me that I haven't been in college in FIVE years!)   My favorite part about this meal (besides the fact that it tastes oh so good) is that it is SUPER easy to make.  I mean seriously, who doesn't love a meal that only requires boiling some chicken breasts, throwing in a bunch of canned goods, and warming it all up to perfection.  YUM.

Here's what you need to make this quick, easy, and super delicious chili on a cold night like tonight:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts--boiled & shredded

2 lb. Velveeta (I use 2% because it's less fat than the regular Velveeta...God bless processed cheese)

2 cans pinto beans--drained

2 cans Ro-Tel

2 cans corn--drained

1 can chicken broth

Tortilla chips (for dippin')

Step 1: Boil the chicken until cooked through and shred with a fork.

Step 2: Combine chicken, Velveeta, and ALL cans into a big old pot over medium-high heat (stir frequently because that Velveeta likes to stick if you don't...)

Step 3: Heat until warm and bubbly and voila...

DELICIOUSNESS IN A BOWL!!!  I love this chili with tortilla chips...which obviously makes it even healthier than it already is.  But on a night like tonight, who couldn't use a few extra calories??!  :)  Enjoy!