Life Update (and a Baby Bump-ish Picture!)

Sometimes it seems like our lives are changing so quickly in so many ways that I forget who I've told what.  So a quick summary of all the happenings in all of our lives...

Josh: got his clearance in January, started working full-time, and is now crazy busy.  Last semester he had the luxury of working part-time, so he could leave early in the afternoon to get to class and not have to make up the time.  Now he leaves home earlier in the mornings to make up the missed time.  Still, he's amazingly pleasant and patient with me, considering the many demands on his time and the late nights and early mornings.  He's a trooper.  :)

I went from full-time to part-time a couple weeks ago, and it's been wonderful.  Last semester we were scrounging peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the middle of the week, because both of us were out late on Josh's class nights and didn't get a chance to cook.  Being home a few days allows me to clean the house, menu plan, pay bills, and make dinner/pack lunches before Josh gets home, so his time at home is free for sleeping or studying or spending time with me.  :)  Plus, fewer late nights for me.  Additionally, I gave up the part of my job I like less (administrative and mailings), and kept the part I like more (financial and data management).  Win win win!

I'm also apparently lucky enough to be one of those women for whom morning sickness continues throughout the pregnancy, but it is much less frequent and I'm able to eat a greater variety of foods now.  Since it's worse when I'm tired, the part-time work schedule has really helped, and I no longer make myself motion sick just by walking out to the mailbox.  Woohoo!   Rich, sugary foods and onions still set me off, but when I told my midwife that, she simply nodded and said "oh, that's great."  Thanks for the sympathy.  :-P

Baby Kekoa: is a boy!  I'm still bummed that I can't put all pink stuff on my baby registry (well...I could, but I don't think either of my two Josh's would appreciate that very much), but we are both excited to meet him, and I know his pack of uncles will train him well in sports.  We're calling him Kekoa (first part of his Hawaiian middle name) to distinguish him from Daddy.

The ultrasound revealed that Kekoa's measuring a bit ahead of average (crossing my fingers for an early birth here.....), and I started feeling him kick around 17 weeks. Josh felt him kick for the first time at 18 weeks, and just last week I started seeing his movements from the outside, which was completely weird.  Suddenly all these milestones started hitting that made everything a bit more real.  This is week 20 for me, so halfway to meeting him!

20 Weeks!

^ That is the highly elusive and extremely finicky beginnings of a baby bump, of which I am very proud.  I'm still in the annoying people-can't-tell-if-I'm-fat-or-pregnant-so-they-stare-awkwardly-at-my-abdomen stage, but at least we're getting somewhere.

And...as a family, we've started the hunt for a place to live come August when our lease expires.  We would love to stay here, but we want more time for Josh to sleep and to be with our little family.  So we're looking for an affordable place closer to his work, preferably where we could stay until he finishes school.

So that's us in a nutshell right now!  Now everyone (at least everyone who even knows I have a blog) is on the same page, and caught up with the various and sundry changes in our lives.  Many more to come!

Why We're Not Having Twins

We have been asked so many times, "So, are you having twins?"  We were asked enough simply because Josh was a twin, but then when his sister-in-law announced that they were expecting twins, the questions multiplied.  I went out to coffee with a friend the other day who said, "Well, you'd better watch out...apparently you're going to have twins next!"

So...let's do a little twin myth-busting, shall we?

Fraternal twins are more likely* in women who have the gene for hyperovulation (or who have undergone fertility treatments, in which case there's nothing genetic about it at all).   A female fraternal twin is likely to have twins herself.  A male fraternal twin, however, may pass this gene down to his daughter and have twin grandchildren, but his own chances of having twins are no higher than anyone else's.

Sooo...even if Josh were a fraternal twin, then my chances of having twins would remain exactly the same.  But if we had a daughter, she could have twins (which, btw, is how the myth got started that twins skip generations).

However, Josh is NOT a fraternal twin.  He is an identical twin.  Identicals are completely random (as far as doctors know - they have no idea what causes eggs to split, but haven't found any sort of correlation between identical twins in families), and actually are technically a malfunction of the normal process.  Neither female nor male identical twins are more likely to have their own twins.

So, in other words, my chances of having twins are about as good (or bad) as anyone else's for three reasons:

(1) Josh is an identical twin rather than fraternal, meaning there's nothing genetic about it and I don't even have a good chance of having twin grandchildren.

(2) I do not share my sister-in-law's genetics, which may or may not be the cause of her twins in the first place.  In any case, her likelihood of having twins has no relation to mine.

(3) As far as I know, there are no fraternal twins on my side of the family, so my chances of carrying the gene are pretty low.

So there you have it.

*Obviously, there are other factors involved and a woman having fraternal twins may or may not have this gene.  But any relation between multiple sets of fraternal twins in a family is usually due to this gene.

Pregnancy is like planning a wedding...

...everyone who has ever been through one wants to tell you their stories.  Which is fine, and cute, and it's a good bonding experience (once the bride/mother-to-be learns to shrug off the well-meaning but completely uninformed advice).  But there's just one problem:  no wedding story will ever come close to a pregnancy horror story.  Your cake might have toppled over, or the best man fainted, or the rings might have been forgotten in a hotel room.  Maybe your veil even caught on fire from lighting the unity candle.

But no, none of those even come close to beating ANYTHING close to "oh yes, after 96 hours of excruciating labor my abdomen was sliced open and then ...[insert groteseque details here]."  Or almost worse, "I thought for sure that once I was past the first trimester we were good to go, but then I miscarried at 19 weeks with copious bleeding and had to be rushed to the ER.  *pause*  Wow, you're pretty far along to not be showing even a little bit...are you sure everything's okay?"

News flash:  I don't need your help coming up with ways my pregnancy could go wrong.  Trust me, my body is coursing with hormones.  I have fully considered every possible thing that could go wrong - food poisoning, lack of nourishment, seatbelt trauma in a car accident, having a 19-pound baby, freak genetic incompatibilities that result in our child being born with a full-length beard, and the chance of being picked off by a sniper on the fifth floor of the office building in our local grocery store parking lot.

[I might have woken my husband up in the middle of the night crying about that last one.]

And I've taken the reasonable precautions for them.  Prenatal vitamins, a healthy diet, frequent (but not too frequent) exercise, safe driving, and pricing bullet-proof vests long enough to cover a protruding belly (we decided that probably a crib was a better investment of the money, although I sure hope we don't live to regret that decision).  And so I've reached the point where there's really nothing I can do about it.  We just wait and pray that everything turns out...and we keep my favorite comfort foods stocked for the days when the hormones take over.

So when the next person eyes my still very flat belly and make a comment like "Gee, you don't seem to grown at all...are you sure the baby's all right?", I will look them in the eye and say very, very sweetly:

"No, it was just an elaborate hoax to see how many people noticed after six or seven months.  Congratulations on catching on so fast!"

And then I will start working on my list of horror stories to tell the next pregnant woman who comes along.

Second-borns are the best

It has become apparent.  It is very obviously second-borns that are the most loved.

You see, when a mother decides she wants her first baby, she really doesn't know what she's getting into.  She doesn't understand the desperate need for twenty pillows propping up her back.  She hasn't considered the loss of her favorite wardrobe - possibly forever.  She has never experienced the utter indignities that pregnant women are subjected to at the doctor's office.

And so, she desires that first child in ignorance.

Oh sure, I love my firstborn without a doubt.  But anyone can walk into a torture chamber willingly, if they don't know what it is.  But a mother choosing to have a second baby is walking into the torture chamber with her eyes open, with full knowledge of what is to come. 

Therefore, I, as the desired second-born, am quite obviously the most loved.  Thanks, Mom.

P.S.  Don't worry to those of you who are concerned about my firstborn's self-esteem.  I'll delete this post before Jiblet can read, which will be sooner than you think because I had a an obviously prophetic dream that she was a child prodigy with far superior mental capabilities and a sunny-sweet, always obedient disposition and an absolutely fabulous mother. Like every firstborn, right?  But then, in that case, I don't think you have to worry about self-esteem issues.

P.P.S.  For you firstborns reading this, really, I'm kidding.  It's okay.  I'm sure your mom loves you very much.   This post is really just a way for me to complain without sounding too whiny, so don't get bent out of shape.

Goodness Gracious, I have a Blog????

Hello blog.  :)

I am posting on you because I don't want to become one of those women whose facebook becomes a pregnancy discussion board.  I mean, people can choose to read my blog.  They'd have to block my newsfeed to avoid seeing my posts.  And you don't want that, do you?

Of course not.

Besides, there's people who actually WANT the details (Hi, Mom and Dad).  So now they can read if they want.  But they don't have to.  Plus, I get to keep a record of pregnancy, so that when that little bundle of joy is in my arms and my brain magically forgets about all the inconveniences of the past nine months, and I turn to Josh and say, "Awww, I just want 20 more of these," then I have a reminder that no, I actually don't want 20 more of those. That I might melt when I look into little Jiblet's eyes, but I really don't want to do this 20 times and ten or less will suffice.  And I don't want to do it with multiples, either.


So blog, I will try to not turn you into a pregnancy log, because the internet does not need to have access to whether my ankles are swelling or info on how difficult it is to sit up in the mornings.  But most likely pregnancy will come up frequently.  Sorry about that.

When I was talking to a dear friend, she asked me what I was learning lately.  I peered the morning sickness induced brain haze and found a recurring theme:

My utter, complete dependence on the good grace of others.

It's easy to appreciate the grace of God.  I mean, no matter how you try, He's perfect and you're not.  But humans are a little different.  They're imperfect, you're imperfect.  You show them grace, they show you grace.  It's really easy to take that for granted, or to take it as "I forgave you, so now you forgive me."

But I found myself in the throes of morning sickness, and therefore, etiquette and social norms went out the window.  My college roommate invited me to a party the first weekend after the morning sickness hit.  I had RSVP'd yes.  But then the day of, I simply couldn't go to a party where there would be food.  Which pretty much describes every party.  So I blew it off.

And then there was the time my boss showed a great act of kindness and ordered pizza for our whole office.  Now, normally I'm a supreme pizza kind of gal.  But onions have declared themselves as my mortal enemy, in any form.  And then one of my co-workers suggested that we get a Supreme pizza, and everyone else very quickly agreed.  I mean, I'm the only girl in an office of guys!  Supreme is the thing to get!

One of my co-workers must have looked at my face.  The face that was plainly conveying the thoughts in my head.  The thoughts that ran something along the line of, "Onions?  On pizza?  That's like the equivalent of bringing in roadkill to the office and dishing it up"  And that kind co-worker very graciously jumped in to suggest a different kind.  When the others said that no, they were absolutely sure that supreme was what they wanted, kind co-worker jerked his head in my direction to remind them of my "condition".

So that was the time when little Jiblet vetoed an entire office to get the kind of pizza he wanted.  Who says children don't have sin natures?

And the list goes on.  My boss brought in his daughter's homemade fudge, very proudly showing off her skills.  I politely took a piece, took a bite, and promptly exited the building.  How can I tell him she did a good job after that?  I didn't eat the dishes that my guests brought to Thanksgiving.  I left church to eat a snack because Jiblet was hungry and goodness knows won't wait for anything.  But that was actually an improvement - I actually went to church that week, despite the 40-minute car ride over the mountains.

And then there's Josh.  As he puts it, I have a different stomach every day.  What sounds great yesterday, and of which I made a week's worth of servings, suddenly becomes a monster in my fridge.  The first week of the sickness, I wanted potatoes.  So we bought a five pound bag of potatoes.  But three days later, I could no longer look at potatoes.  And what's worse, I could no longer wash the dishes of any meal that included potatoes.  So Josh's meals have been reduced to the food I can't look at.

So what I have learned in the last two months?  First, I learned that the first trimester is really awful, and I really hope that the morning sickness disappears completely soon (it's hard to imagine being able to eat anything, though!).  But more importantly, I am completely dependent on others to extend grace, no matter what manners or social customs I ignored.  To still be my friend, even if I leave the lunchroom when they bring in their food.  To still include me in their plans, even though I cancelled last minute the last time because of carsickness.  To be kind enough to overlook my social transgressions.

And that's grace.

Why Hello, July

Wait. Where did that month go?

Or maybe the more accurate question would be, "wait, where did that blog go?"  It got lost in the day-to-day whirlwind that is preparing for the fall.  So I present to you, in five parts: Our July. It turned into a multi-theme month that is cultivating a lot of good habits.

FLYing all the way home

July has been a "get-the-apartment-in-order" month, Flylady style.  Yes, the bane of our existence growing up who was always making us throw away old toys has been this month's theme as we prepare for our move.

It's been great.  Not only is the apartment in apple-pie order, but we've gotten rid of so much junk.  All those baggy clothes, old t-shirts in excess, single earrings, kitchenware that we have duplicates of, all those ratty old college twin bedsets - gone.  Woohoo.  I even got Josh to part with his terrible bright yellow and red tie.

Plus, we're practically packed for the move. Everything we're not planning on using in the next three weeks is packed away, labelled, and color-coded by room.  So this is going to be a pretty easy move, I think, and all because we're spending ten minutes a day on preparations.

Returning to my first "love"


I compiled my book list for "books to get through while Josh is in grad school".  There's about 90 books on my list, and so far this month I've read three.  Currently I am working on "The Little Prince" in Spanish.   After the post-college burnout, I read a little bit, but not a whole lot.  Now I've remembered what it is to love reading again, and to spend hours curled up with a book.  And Josh is reading right along with me!

Staying fit and having fun


Each day we are spending 15-20 minutes working out.  Three days a week this means cardio workouts - running, roller blading, ultimate frisbee, tennis.  The other days it means strength training + easy cardio - walking, cleaning, etc.  But the rule is to not let them be a "workout", but to be fun.  We're playing tennis during our lunch break once a week, and now we're hitting the trails on roller blades on weekends.  :)

A surprise improvement

Since I was about 9 and running track, I have always gotten a lot of headaches.  I blamed this on computer time, allergies, sleep deprivation...all of the above.  I never in a million years suspected dehydration, because I drink a lot of water.  I carry a water bottle with me at all times and sip from it all day, drinking almost nothing else. For the past three years, I've been drinking the recommended amount of water of 64oz. a day - in fact, a little more.

So I thought my headaches weren't related to dehydration at all.  But then early this month, I decided to drink until at no point during the day I was thirsty. If I'm thirsty, I drink until I no longer want anything to drink.

On the first day, I drank three liters (~101 ozs).

So for a week, I put three rubber bands on my water bottle and took one off each time I drank a liter.

NO HEADACHES!

All that time, I thought I was getting enough water because I was drinking the "recommended" amount.  Turns out my body needs more water than that - just like it needs more sleep than the average person (yes, my body wants 10 hours of sleep to be truly happy).  Now I'm drinking 3-4 liters a day, and I feel so much better.

So the moral of the story is you're probably dehydrated right now.  Go drink some water.

A new era

Josh and I made a commitment that for the first year of our marriage, we would intentionally avoid making too many commitments and instead really focus on intentionally getting to know each other. And that year is over. It's been wonderful.

Josh starts grad school next month and we'll have less time together.  If that had happened last fall, I feel certain our marriage would have been much less fun.   I will miss him like crazy on those nights he is gone, but at least I know we had a fabulous year where our first priority was simply to get used to being married.

August: the Demise of the Photo Faker


So yes, Mom, I'm a photo faker.  Maybe it was growing up with a mom who has a camera bag permanently attached to her shoulder.  But I don't take pictures.  Ever.  If something noteworthy happens, someone else has a camera, right? And they'll post them on facebook, because that's all people do with pictures now anyway.

Next month, my theme will be to take a picture a day.  And to post it.  So it will be a blog post a day. Another two-fer.  :)

That's all for now!  A nice long post to make up for not posting ever.  :P

Change of Plans...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...the music theme was scrapped within a couple days and the Josh theme is in.  Which means that this month, I am working on learning/experiencing more of Josh's hobbies and tastes.  This includes but is not limited to:

-reading Zorro
-learning the game he plays with his miniatures (lotr based, of course)
-probably learning to play Battlestar Galatica
-watching the Cosby show and Muppet clips
-etc.

You might call it getting in touch with my inner nerd/adventurer.  We might even pick up Star Wars from the library.

Anyway, the change due to a lot of news that we received all in the same week and that is causing considerable stress to Josh.  Therefore, I'm trying to help him be distracted/relaxed at home in the evenings.

In other news:

-we will be moving late July/early August.  Possibly to West Virginia (barely, but still.  Yay car registration and new licenses).  Where we will go, we're not sure, but we are definitely going to move, and definitely moving out of our current town.

-no scholarships have come through yet - please pray that the necessary funding for grad school comes through.  We have two and a half months to come up with the first semester's amount.

-the required course, which Josh was told last year he could transfer in b/c the professor teaches the class both at our alma mater and Josh's grad school, cannot be transferred in.   Therefore, he ended up adding a class (only offered in the fall and a pre-req to most of the other classes) to his schedule and will be in class on MTW from 6:30-9:30 next fall, after an eight hour workday and before a 1.5 hour commute home.  This will however, hopefully be the last 3-class semester.*

*We are appealing to the professor to convince the registrar to let Josh transfer it in.  Pray it goes well...

-in preparation for a move (and to get all our we-hate-making-decisions-but-have-to-do-it energy out), we performed a massive purge and our den is now 1/4 full of stuff we are selling/giving away/throwing out.

And that's all for now!  We're both doing well, and actually...now that we've gone through the purge, we're both excited to move (we're ready to move now!).  And this is really the first time we've had to make the tough decisions as a married couple, so I feel like it's been a worthwhile growing experience. :)