Blogging silence

I'm slowly beginning to realise that having a new baby=no time for the internet. It's a weird reality for me since pre-Malea my whole entire day revolved around the internet since I had to be on the computer for work. This is just going to be a quick blog because Malea is taking a nap and I have so many things to get done while she is sleeping. I'm learning though that nap time is a blessing to mom's because otherwise nothing would never get done! I actually have more time to do housework now than I did before which is pretty nice. Of course I haven't had to attempt to make dinner yet because we have been so blessed by everyone bringing us great meals so we'll see if I can keep the house clean and cook dinner once our dinners are up. :)

Last week was a big week for Malea and I. Monday I took her to the doctor and she checked out perfectly. Tuesday morning however she woke up with pink eye! So Tuesday I went to my doctor's appt in Red Bluff and then drove all the way back to Redding to visit Malea's doctor for the second day in a row! Her pink eye is all cleared up now but it was so sad to see her with a gooped up eye! Last week I also learned that a tiny baby can still make HUGE poops. Malea was all stopped up for a week or so and was having trouble with gas and pooping but now she has figured it all out and we have accomplished the art of "blow-outs". Luckily there haven't been any up the back, just out the side. I think I did 3 loads of her laundry last week!!! :) Malea also had a big weekend. Daddy got to babysit her for the first time on Saturday so that Mommy could have a little break and help Heather re-arrange their living room. She also got to go to Wal*Mart, out to eat and the Stirring this weekend. I was pretty discouraged at the Stirring though because even though she didn't fuss or disrupt anyone I ended up missing the whole message because I was in the back feeding her. At least I got to hear worship I guess. So we'll see if we come to church the next couple of weeks...

I am also learning many things about motherhood. I'm learning that I would go crazy if I didn't have an amazing husband who is grounded and SOOOO helpful. And I'm learning that one of the hardest things actually has nothing to do with the baby but it's mastering the art of getting out of the shower without leaking milk all over the floor!!! Why doesn't anybody warn you about this kind of stuff!?!? I think I have it figured out but it took me a few days and a few messy spills. :)

I'm not sure when I will have a chance to blog again but it's not because I don't want to it's just because I don't really have the time right now, sorry. :)

Not here yet

After 3 days of contractions and a trip to the hospital yesterday afternoon Malea is still not here yet. Yesterday afternoon I had my strongest contractions to date so we decided to head to the hospital just to be safe. After about 2 hours at the hospital and some really intense contractions they sent us home. :( I guess Malea is just not ready to come yet. They did say though that she is positioned perfectly and that she if fully engaged. Hopefully that means that when she is ready to come that it will be quick and easy. :) That's our prayer at least! Even though I was really disappointed and incredibly frustrated to be sent home I think yesterday made for a good practice round. Our quick couple of hours at the hospital showed me how much love and support I have from my dad--who drove us to the hospital, my mom--who was there encouraging me and more excited than any mom I've ever seen, my wonderful husband--who was so supportive and encouraging through all of my contractions and kept telling me how beautiful I looked even though I was in pain, and my amazing friend Julie--who gave up the afternoon with her family to come talk my though my pain, rub my back, do lunges with me down the halls of St. E's, and offer me incredible support throughout the process. I love you all and I think that because of you Malea's birth will be an incredible experience... when she does finally decide to come! :)

Coming already???

Yesterday afternoon I started to have contractions. I was only having about 4 an hour so it wasn't really anything to get excited about. I went to the doctor and he checked to see how dilated I was and what he said was "I'm not saying you will have her tonight but I wouldn't be surprised if you had her this week." WHAT!?! That's crazy! After my appointment I went home, still having about 4 contractions an hour, and I took it easy most of the night since Matt was gone at an advisory team meeting. Before we went to bed last night we made sure we laid out our outfits for the hospital and tried to tie up any lose ends around the house. I continued to have contractions throughout the night but they never got very strong. This morning I got out of bed and started timing them at 6:21am. For 2 hours they were about 10 min apart but then after that they started only being 6/7 min apart. They still aren't very strong so I'm not headed off to the hospital yet but I would say that I am in the early stages of labor. Now the only question is how many hours, days, weeks is this going to go on??? Here comes another one...

Belly button?

This is my belly button:

The other night Matt and I were just hanging out watching Malea move around in my belly when out of no where he says to me, "your belly button is dirty."

What? Are you kidding me? I can't even see in my belly button anymore!

So I head upstairs to get the q-tips to clean it out, because apparently it was "dirty." Well what I didn't realize is that when your belly button is neither IN nor OUT it's practically impossible to clean it! I tried for 5 minutes to get a q-tip in there to clean it out and what I finally realized was that that was never going to happen and I think Matt was seeing shadows because from what I could see it wasn't even dirty!

All that effort for nothing...

Rude awakening

One thing that people warned me about when I got pregnant were muscle spasms. I would always think to myself "yeah yeah, I'm sure it's not that bad"... well it is! This last week I have been awaken 4 out of 5 nights with crazy muscle spasms in my calf muscles. The other night the pain in my left calf was so bad that it took me a couple of minutes to get it to go away and then in the morning it still hurt!!! So weird! Last night I was awaken again by a spasm in my right calf muscle and I was so tired that I couldn't think straight so it took me a long time to figure out which way to flex my foot to get the pain to subside. Not having to wake up to go to the bathroom has been a blessing but being rudely awaken by crazy pain in my calf muscles is definitely a curse of pregnancy!

Nesting

Everyone says that the "nesting" phase of your pregnancy doesn't kick in until the very end. Well I know that every one is different and I think mine kicked in a little early. Yesterday I had had it with the grime on the inside of our windows from all of the smoke this summer, so armed with a bucket of soapy water, a squeegee, and a roll of paper towels, I set to cleaning ALL of the windows. The job ended up being much longer, and grosser, than I had originally thought it would be. First of all I realized that the smoke had left a lot more grime than I had ever imagined. When I would squeegee the windows at the end of cleaning each window there would be puddles of--literally--black water piled on the window sill. SO disgusting! I even had to change out my water between the upstairs and downstairs windows because it was SO black!!! Honestly it just made me angry at the fires all over again. That was a bad couple of months for me. Secondly I realized that we have a TON of windows in our house. You don't really think about how many windows you have until you set out to clean them all. After I was finished I counted that I cleaned 21 windows and some of those are those big pictures windows--it was a lot of work!

My second task in the "nesting" phase was to wash all of my drapes. So first thing this morning I pulled down all the drapes and began running them through the washer. Now the only problem is that some of them actually shrank and they are a little farther off the floor than they were at 7am this morning... annoying! I'm not sure how I will fix that problem. Maybe I'll tackle that on another day.

Hmmm... wonder what will be next...

A few things I've learned

When it comes to being pregnant there are a few things I've learned:

1. If you "hold it" for long periods throughout the day and then go to the bathroom 2 or 3 times right before bed (even if it's just a few drops) then you can sleep through the night. The last 2 nights I have slept all the way through, and I've had about 6 other nights in the past month or so that I've been able to stay in bed all night! Hallelujah!!!

2. I now know what the inside of my belly button looks like. It hasn't popped out but it's a huge hole that I can stick my finger in... weird. Before it was always a flat little thing that I could barely fit a q-tip in and now I can stick the tip of my finger in it! Strange.

3. The rumors are true... whoopi really is better when you have 4 pounds of extra blood pumping through you, who knew that you had to get fat and heavy to have even better "sexy time" (as Matt calls it)??? Well I guess that's one perk to getting fatter and heavier! Strange.

4. I've been thin my whole life and never had an issue with body image (well not since Jr. High when I think we all went through it) but now that I'm pregnant and people tell me I'm "HUGE" or that I've gained a few too many pounds I am suddenly struck with HUGE insecurity issues and I feel like a fat cow! I even have a good excuse but for some reason I just can't get over it. I guess all I really care about it that I don't get stretch marks and that my face doesn't turn into a blimp--yikes!

Thing I never knew...

I never knew when you got pregnant that it meant, not only your belly was going to get bigger, but also your butt was going to enlarge and you were going to get back fat (seriously it's sick!). Are there any other things that I should know about before I wake up one morning and discover some other crazy thing that has happened to my body? I think my college roommate put it best, she said that "being pregnant is the best science experiment that could ever happen to your body." :)

Crib frustrations!!!!!

About a month ago Matt and I found the crib that we wanted to buy for the baby's room. My mother-in-law was nice enough to offer to buy it for us so we were ecstatic and couldn't wait to get it. Well last Thursday she went to order it and they had discontinued the color that I wanted! Seriously why would they do that to a pregnant woman?!? That changes everything. I spent 2 1/2 hours online on Friday morning trying to find another company that made the same crib in the color I wanted... no luck. I did find a crib that is almost exactly the same, with one minor difference, but of course it is $100 more! Grrr!!! So now I am back to square 1. I think I have resolved myself to just going with the white crib but now I have to re-figure all of my designs so that I can use a white crib and white dresser, because obviously I'm not going to put a white crib up against white wainscoting. Hmmm... so much to do, so little time.