The Pregnant Heart gets, what the Pregnant Heart wants

I’ve been starving all day – just feel like eating constantly. Not artificial eating though, I’m talking full meal eating. Needless to say, we don’t leave a lot of full meals laying around this house. Adam’s a big advocate of saving leftovers, so there were some in the fridge. I worked from home today to get a bunch of things done for some big meetings the next two days. One of my fridge foraging excursions led me into a tupperware of Hashbrown/eggs/bacon left over from maybe a week ago and another tupperware of corned beef and rice, from last night. Well, throwing them together didn’t sound like a terrible idea, so that’s exactly what happened. What was I going to do to add a little freshness to the dish? Why, throw another egg in of course. It turned out amazing! I haven’t really had any weird 3AM food cravings or anything crazy like that. Throughout I’ve gone through phases of Coconut cupcake, Egg McMuffin’s, Cereal (I’m talking good cereal, like the kind coated in sugar, like Captain Crunch and Lucky Charms), and Caramello’s. Right now, I am currently specific crave-less.

I have a really sick love of eggs. I’ll eat them with everything. Egg on a salad, egg on a burger, egg on pasta? Yes please, I’ll take them all. I could eat eggs every single day of my life, they are so versatile.

I’ve been stressing about two things lately, let’s talk about each of these a little more in depth.

1. Work
2. Babies – and all the things that go with them
3. My craft stuff
4. My health

Work – I just feel like there is tons to do lately. I’ve been able to stay under 100 emails, which would have been unheard of 6 months ago even, so that’s good. I’ve been building a global team around me, which has eased the load. Tuesday and Wednesday we have big meetings and I feel ill prepared. I’ve been working on this one big project, called an Administrative Guide, that I’m building in OneNote. It’s pretty amazing, and I’m stoked on everything I’ve got into it, but I just feel like it’s going to be torn apart when I get it in front of the client. That’s disheartening. Also, I’m leaving in 3.5 months, which means that everything has to be a nice package tied up with a bow, and ready for me to move on. A sign of a good leader is one that plans succession well, so that when they leave, the company still thrives. I intend to do everything possible to make sure this happens. But, it’s all still stressful.

Babies – Building a registry, thinking of all the things I need, blah blah blah. It’s all things I don’t want to think about. We started registering on Amazon.com. It’s going ok, but i’m sure there are going to be other things that crop up, that I just don’t want to deal with. It seems like such a hassle. We might buy a stroller tonight! We’ve been eyeying the UPPAbaby Vista, and we found a total score on Craigslist, so we’re going to look at it tonight. Seems pretty slick. When we start buying stuff, that also means we needed places to put stuff (see section 3; re: Craft Stuff). I also have several friends having babies and in particular, wanted to make one something, so I have to get that together too. Not to mention that I want my baby to have something personally made by me as well.

Craft Stuff – have I mentioned that we’re putting our baby in what I’ve called my Craft Room to date? That means shit tons of cleaning and purging. I have a LOT of craft stuff, because I’m the creative crafty type. So – I have to organize, purge, sell, donate everything that I think is now low priority, having a child. I’ll probably see if my MIL wants some stuff, but the vast majority, I’d like to sell so that I recoup some of the money I spent on all this amazing stuff. That’s stressful. I’ve been trying to do it in small chunks, but find that I’m too tired to really get anything going while I’m home. I expend all my energy at work every day. Then I get home and just want to relaxing.

My Health – it’s not terrible, so don’t get me wrong. However, I gained a substantial amount of weight in the last month, which I found out at the Dr on Friday. I’m disappointed in myself. I don’t feel like I’ve been using pregnancy like an excuse, but I have been eating whatever I can. A lot of normally healthy, great, and delicious things just don’t sound like something I want to ingest, quite honestly. It’s been rough in that aspect. Not to mention that I get tired really easy, so working out really hasn’t happened. Walking, like everyone tells you to do, hasn’t even been happening. Adam keeps offering to walk with me, but like I mentioned before, I am always just too tired. When in the hell is this second burst of energy that everyone and their mom keeps speaking of going to happen? Probably never for me!

Baby is getting more active every day. Last night he was trying to keep me from sleeping, but I won that battle! My uterus is the size of a soccer ball right now, at 26 weeks along. That is mind boggling to me. I like staring at my naked stomach, it’s fascinating in my opinion. I’m not really doing anything, but I’m some how growing a whole human inside of me. We signed up for our birthing classes. 6 excruciating evenings for 2 hours each. Are you serious? Seems like overkill. Oh, and I was reading up on healing after the birth, which I shouldn’t have done, because my vagina is going to be a disaster zone. Anyway I can just plan to not have a vaginal delivery? That sounds swell. Could we also cut me open before stretch marks start? That’s another thing, I inspect my stomach every day while lubing it up to look for new stretch marks. So far, coast is clear. This uterus is going to stretch all the way to my sternum, my Dr says, and I’ll feel like I can’t breath. Stretch marks come around the no breathing time, usually. So, another awesome stage I get to look forward to. Great… I’ve always known I would be an amazing mother, but I have ALWAYS dreaded the act of actually being pregnant. I’m finding the actually being pregnant portion not so bad, but the whole squeeze something the size of my cat out of my vagina things, is terrifying. Why does everyone keep saying that this will all be worth it? Did you know my belly button will never be the same? Supposedly I’ll grow a half shoe size at some point too. These all sounds like negatives in my opinion.

On a positive side note – I have never felt more in love, and connected with Adam, knowing that we’ve made a baby that I’m growing inside me, and the excitement we both have to meet him.

Embarking on the Digital Age

My dear friend Becky (with Lindsay, and Baby Kieffer’s help) has pushed me into the digital age of scrapbooking. I feel a little liberated that I won’t need all this physical “stuff” to look through and put together, and purchase. I spent some time tooling around with it. I have Photoshop on my iMac, but on my new MacBook it’s not installing properly for some reason. This lead me to download the trial version of Photoshop Elements. I’ve found that it’s perfectly functional for the purposes of scrapbooking, creating digital flyers and what not. It has all the things that I actually use, and not all the extra garbage that I’m sure took up tons of space on my hard drive that I never touched, like Bridge. I don’t even know what that is. I learned all kinds of new things just tinkering around on my own with the above layout. It’s pretty geeky exciting. I got totally jazzed working on this layout. Since, I’ve only done one other layout, that I’m not perfectly happy with, but there has to be an end to messing around with a layout, or you could spend eons.

Yesterday was a fairly good day. I got really worked up at work completing this master project I’m working on. I felt really good about it, and then ended my day with a terrible meeting that just made me angry. BUT, it’s also those types of meetings that make me feel like I’m super good at my job. It’s a double edged sword.

My evening was pretty nice. I went home, and took a million calls to deal with some work escalations, but then it was great. I went on a walk with Adam, which I’m told, is the right kind of exercise for a pregnant woman to be getting. Afterwards, Adam and I made breakfast for dinner, which was pretty delicious, but I always love breakfast. After we settled down from dinner a little, we started work on our Europe scrapbook. We kept countless receipts, coasters, pamphlets, etc of all the cool things we did in Europe, and since those are physical items I decided this would be my last physical scrapbook. I bought a Smash Book, which I think will be ideal for putting it all together. You basically just glue and tape in pictures. The problem is that we have a bazillion pictures. So – I’ll likely want a physical and NON physical scrapbook to document our last expedition (the expedition of a LIFETIME) before we went down this path of having children.

A note on getting pregnant: We knew we wanted kids, and that we’d start trying sometime in the near future. When we planned our Europe trip, we knew this was probably going to be the last truly special thing that we did with just the two of us. We decided that we would start trying to make our little family while in Europe, because that could only add to the excitement. We figured it would take a couple months to get pregnant, and I was prepared to feel the sadness of getting my period every month, knowing that this time I actually didn’t want it to come. Our trip was beyond amazing. The things that we experienced together, and the memories that we made will be something we’ll have for our entire lives. Experiencing life really makes us much closer to each other and we both have the same appreciation for travel, new experiences, and each other. We came out of this trip more in love than we’ve ever been, and very fulfilled with all the choices we made while travelling. I don’t think there is a single thing either of us would have done differently (ok, maybe I wouldn’t have kissed that girl, or let Adam sit at the train station while I went in search of a bathroom, but it was all part of the trip).

When we arrived home, after 32 odd days of being gone from US soil, I realized I hadn’t had a period. It had crossed my mind in Europe, but I’ve always been irregular, and sometimes my red tides are 40 days apart. So, I pushed those thoughts aside and figured we could figure that all out when we were home. I took a pregnancy test the day we got home, after a nap. That sucker showed up positive! We were both so excited, we didn’t really know how to react. The realness wasn’t really sunk in yet. I proceeded to take 4 test over the next couple days, and then called the Dr. We were immediately advised we were pregnant if we’ve taken that many all positive tests, and they scheduled us to come in 3 weeks later. Those were 3 excruciating weeks of waiting for official confirmation. I think once that blob showed up on the screen and we saw our bean, a new level of really hit us.

New Phase of Life

I realize that I don’t post on here very often. For the past two years I’ve been very busy developing my career and have zero craft time. I find that depressing, like I’m losing a sense of myself. I still really enjoy crafting, I just find that it’s not really conducive to an on-the-go type gal like myself. I travelled 40% of the time in 2012. How would I lug that stuff all over the world. Let’s face it, I wasn’t even with it enough to pack something to embroider on my trips. So, now that the traveling has almost completely stopped, I find myself missing my old self.

Update on me: While we were in Europe, we started trying to get pregnant. We’ve been married over 5 years and felt like timing was finally right. Adam did turn 30 this year, after all. We don’t want a geezer daddy for the babes. Going into that mindset, I was prepared to spend months trying, constantly be disappointed and keep trying. Adam was excited for the trying. Well, the good Lord blessed us and BAM, pregnant after our first month of trying. We found out the day we got back from Europe, and we were both amazed, terrified and very excited.

Now, I’m 23 weeks pregnant, over half way there. We know we are having a beautiful little boy, complete with uncircumcised weenie and all, per the pictures, and we have a name picked out. Baby is due on June 6th and we can’t hardly wait.

Now, this brings me to my present situation, of crafting. I’m really feeling like crafting (did I mention I’m pregnant?). We live in a two bedroom condo, and bedroom two is switching from my beloved home office/craft room to a baby room. I need to get rid of approximately half of my crafting goods. That is depressing. Everyone keeps telling me this will be worth it. Where will I paint? Where will I craft paper cards or scrapbook? Where will I sew? Where will I make jewelry? I’m just having a hard time mentally processing what things to get rid of, how to get rid of them, and if it’s worth the time and energy of selling it.

Awhile ago, my friends Becky and Lindsay, and I all got together so Lindsay could teach us the ins and outs of digital scrapbooking. What a wonderful girl Lindsay is?! Not only did she take amazing pictures of my hubby and me (of course we paid her!), but she also taught me how to continue to craft without needing all the stuff. So, Becky and I have been diligently building our shared drop boxes, and starting to go down this road of the digital craft age. I’m already in love, but have done about 2 things. My Christmas card, and one half done page from my team retreat at work. I think documenting life helps me enjoy it and remember that it’s all been worth it, so I’m very excited to continue. My wonderful, amazing husband let me go buy a MacBook Pro. Yes, I have a really fancy gigantic computer, but I can’t take that where ever I go. I do love that dang thing though! So, now I have this mobile device that I love, and I’m loving more each day, and that I can continue my crafty journey on.

I listed all my stamp sets, and only 5 didn’t sell. I’m excited that was a quick $100 to pay this beast (MacBook Pro) off. I have to keep selling, and dwindling the piles of stuff. I don’t want to be a hoarder, but when it comes to crafting, it’s almost impossible not to hoard. Anyway, that’s my woe of the moment. More pregnant girl problems to come.