IT'S A...

throughout the first half of my pregnancy i noticed that there's this game that people like to play called "guess what you're having". i realized that there are up to 2 parties that can be involved in this game: the people who try and make you guess what you're having, and then the people who will guess for you. i liked the latter of the parties, because then i was not obligated to join in the speculation.

my family had been playing this game since the moment they found out i was with child. instantaneously all of my brothers decided that i was incubating a miniature one of these:

image source



my 15 year old brother, brad, was sure that i'd find this out when one day "THIS IS SPARTA!!!" would echo from my abdomen, followed by a kick, followed by a bout of unconsciousness- since apparently a kick from an unborn spartan will KO a person from the inside out. my brothers then began to make plans to dress the little spartan up in a red cape and helmet to go fight wolves at the age of 7 years. this conversation prompted my youngest brother, cole, to try to "persuade" the fetus to be a boy by popular vote (i think he needs a serious talk about how biology and reproduction isn't a democratic process), and during the ordeal my father came in declaring that he knew "exactly" what i was having.

"oh yeah?" brad said audaciously. "well tell us then, smart guy." my dad glanced around at the expectant room and announced,"she is going to haaaaave- a BABY!" and then began laughing outrageously as the rest of the room erupted into a chaotic din of disparaging comments. (yeah... this stuff happens in my family for reals, all the time).

my mom was certain that i was having a girl from the first week that i started making oblations to the porcelain throne. "morning sickness is always the worst with girls," she said. "i think that you are having one." after weeks on end of violent sickness, i was pretty dang convinced i was having one too.

occassionally, i'd pull this tricky little game on christopher. he was pretty elusive. our conversations would go as follows, with myself instigating:
"so... what do you think i'm having?"
"i don't know"
"do you care?"
"i don't have a preference either way"
"for real?"
"yeah."
"you have no clue?"
"nope"
"you're telling me you have no gut feeling."
"i honestly don't"
"well alright then. so much for this conversation."
"......."
"......."

at last, came the morning of my 20 week ultrasound. before chris went to work, i was FINALLY graced with his opinion that i was having a girl with the explanation that "since you're finding out today, now i can tell you." sneaky man. playing ambivalent for that whole time. anyhow, since he had to go to work that day, my mom and my very curious 18 year old brother, grant, tagged along to the scan instead. the most important thing to me was finding out if the baby was healthy- i had such concerns about it, being the paranoid that i am- it was SUCH a great relief to me when the ultrasound technician let me know that the baby looked normal and healthy. however, finding out the sex of the baby was slightly trickier, as it required the little fetus to open it's legs for longer than a nanosecond- which barely happened. i laid there on the table for SO long, staring at my unborn child's butt, waiting for it. i actually told the ultrasound technician that it was ok to just let me go without finding out right before the legs opened up for a brief moment and we caught a nice glimpse of an absence of spartan parts- which, of course, meant: "it's a girl!" (my brothers were sorely disappointed)
--
later on that night i pulled out the ultrasound photos to show chris (a great deal of them were blurry because little lady staples was moving around all over the place during the scan- she is her father's daughter already). "see, i knew it was a girl." he said, smiling. he was pretty happy about it.

so, what now? it's name pickin' time of course :) we've almost got one... stay tuned. hopefully we won't have to change it at birth... i've been hearing stories of sons who were supposed to be daughters, according to ultrasounds. i guess the only way to know for certain is to wait until the child is born. just a few more months to go!

octoberween

so this month consisted of a lot of planning of things and not exactly following through because i was still a sickly sickerton for the most of it (i thought it was tapering off last month. i was wrong). but of the things that we did do, here's the list.

oktoberfest: we don't oktoberfest for the reason that everyone else does (we don't drink), so we went during the day when the lines for the food wouldn't be as crowded, and when i was the least likely to be ill. and not only did it work out for us, but we ran into my family there as well (my mom usually takes all the kids out of school to spend the day with them there, as a tradition). therefore, we wandered around with them the whole time, and had a blast.

the pumpkin patch: because we're festive like that. come on, you can't do october without a pumpkin, no matter how old you are. brings out the kid in you (not literally though- my kid's still safely inside me, incubating away).

excited christopher finds his pumpkin. hooray.

halloween: the week before halloween was so busy for us that we were too wiped out to do anything for the holiday (laaaaaaame i know!!). i was still able to eat my fair share of candy though :) mmm.... candy... luckily for us though, this dude helped us out with our halloween decorating:

wasn't it nice of him?

oldly weds.

so apparently the common consensus is that a married couple is considered "newly wed" for a year. ah "newly weds"... doesn't the phrase conjure up thoughts of rose petals, giggles and holding hands and skipping down some path together while birds sing, bunnies hop everywhere and butterflies flutter about? ok... perhaps i am exaggerating slightly, but you get the picture. anyhow, i was giving this topic some critical thought the other night while i was reading this blog called "the dating divas"... cute little blog, and quite popular by the looks of it. i bet that a great many of you would probably enjoy it. let me just say right now that i like this blog enough to follow it, and i think it's interesting. i mean, i've got a husband, and we try to date (eachother, obviously), and isn't that what the blog is all about?

all that being said, apparently this blog is authored by a group of really creative women who have husbands who are also very creative... something that i am not, by default, and something that chris is very not, by nature. for instance: scrapbooking? curse word to me. nothing makes me more anxious than sitting at a table with piles upon piles of decorative paper, bows, glue, pictures and strange cutting contraptions. and chris? doesn't know what scrapbooking even is (i've tried to explain it to him, but his brain cannot grasp the subject). so anyhow, i am sitting here reading this blog about making handmade invitations to dates, dressing up for themed activities, scrapbooking, and using rose petals all over the place to be romantic... and inwardly feeling, let's say, less than inspired. my inner voice says: "now now, noel. you're being a cranky pregnant lady. ask chris for his opinion." so i asked him: "hey, uh... so what do you think about a written, handmade invitation to a date?"
 he goes, "um why would you do that? coudn't you just tell me about the date? i'm just gonna throw it away after i read it. seems like a bunch of wasted effort."
validation and releif! "ah, thank you honey, i was thinking the same thing!... hey so... what do you think about rose petals all over the bed, for 'romance'?"
he thinks for a second and says, "well... i dunno. i... guess... so.... but isn't that kind of a mess? i mean, it's not like they do much anyways...."
"THANK you! my thoughts EXACTLY!! oh i'm so glad i'm not the only one who thinks like this!"
"ha, yeah, i can just imagine me throwing rose petals everywhere and you coming in, getting all pissed off and saying 'great! who's gonna clean all this crap up tonight?' haha! why are you even asking me all this stuff?"
and so i showed him the blog. chris took a few seconds, furrowed his brow and said "whaaaat the heck? NO honey. what the... all of this stuff is uneccessary. how do these people have time for this? even looking at it is making me tired."
"so... it doesn't matter to you that i am unromantic and non-creative?"
"no honey. you're perfectly fine. don't even try any of that stuff- i'm not interested. just spend a day with me to go out and do something together like we already do- that is good enough for me. i like that. and who the heck knows what 'romance' is anyways? it's a stupid term, and people only pretend to know what it is."
we laughed together.

this isn't to say that we haven't ever done any "uneccessary stuff" when we first started dating... for instance, around halloween a couple of years ago chris spiderwebbed my car while i was at work, and then left a card and flowers on it. when i brought that to his rememberance he laughed, "yeah that was funny. but it makes no sense to do that now... i'd do it, and you'd laugh for a second and then you'd have spend a bunch of time cleaning it all off so you can drive to school early the next morning. i don't want to do that to you. we have a good relationship and we have other things to worry about." so so true, and i'm grateful for that. i used to think that couples stopped doing "cute" stuff for eachother when they "lost the spark". now i realize that those cute, outrageous things that were so fun early in the relationship are replaced by deeper, subtler, more meaningful things. like getting his favorite dinner on the table hot and ready the moment he walks through the door when i know he's had a long, rough day at work. like him doing the dishes for me after dinner because i'm sick and tired from being pregnant. like a voluntary back-rub when the other is sore and exhausted. i suppose one of the reasons why i love my husband so much is because we think similarly, appreciate similar things, and uphold eachother in our daily endeavors. sometimes life is hard. sometimes it's all you can do to get through to the end of the day. and when you get home and collapse on the floor, the other person is there to lift you up, heal you, and make it possible for you to make it one more day.

THAT is what i think matters, and that is what i know matters to him. and so somehow because of this i feel that deep down we are an old couple, even though we've only been married 8 months. :) i call us "oldly weds". not to say that we wouldn't hold hands down the aforementioned path with the singing birds, hopping rabbits and fluttering butterflies... we'd probably just walk instead of skip.

this picture is from our front porch. when chris and i first started seeing eachother we bought this plant in an effort to "beautify" his front walkway (in a masculine way of course). at this time we were not exclusive, and so it bothered him when i went to hang out with other guys... one of these nights i was on my way to do just that, and felt bad about it, so i bought him these manly figurines, placed them in the planter, and left chris a voice message to water his plants. later on that night i got a voice message in reply from chris, thanking me and saying that he'd never had anyone do something so thoughtful for him. he's since told me that it was at that moment that he knew he loved me. this was over two years ago. as you can see, the figurines are still there. :)

septiembre!!

oh september... one of my favorite months!! although chris denies the existence of season changes in southern california (chris: it's warm all year long here! it doesn't even snow! the leaves don't even turn colors! you have no idea what seasons ARE miss born-and-raised-in-san-diego!), i happen to enjoy the subtle changes that happen with the commencement of autumn over here in this part of the country... it's all the autumn i've ever known. ;)

so many happenings this month... and they all seemed to happen in the first week too:

#1: chris returned from his marathon detail out in arizona (yay)! those were the longest six weeks of all time!! it was nice to have him back home again. lucky for him, he got a week's reprieve before going back to work.

#2: 1 year anniversary of our engagement (september 7)! to celebrate, we were going to revisit the proposal spot at the scripps birch aquarium in la jolla.... buuuut i ended up being way more nauseated than i anticipated and so instead we enjoyed eachother's company at home. mmm, pregnancy sickness. so romantic.

#3: my brother, ross returned from his 2 year long mission in zimbabwe, africa. SO exciting!! chris met ross for a grand total of 30 minutes while we were watching the summer olympics together back in 2008. it's kind of funny, because i don't think ross anticipated coming home to another brother by the time he got off his mission. but he did, and amid all the hugs at the airport, there was a friendly handshake between the two boys. (handshake. honestly?)

#4: baby doctor appointment... and chris accompanied me this time. it was really neat to hear the little fetus's heartbeat... although it didn't like the doppler too much so it kept moving away from it. chris' commentary on the subject: "aw, sounds like there's a real baby in there!"

#5: on the last day of september (today!), chris and i took a day trip to julian. good little adventure for my grumpy pregnant butt (i am still dealing with pregnancy sickness... but it's limited itself to just mornings now, thank goodness. still, after a particularly rough a.m., i am not the happiest rabbit in the hutch, that's for sure). we walked around, found some crazy little shops, found some restrooms, drank some cherry phosphate, and ate some pie. i perked up after the pie. :) we had a grand little time. and took pictures of me trying to look prego. see following paragraph:

about halfway through september i started... not fitting into my clothes anymore... oh soooo awkward. because it's not like i look manifestly pregnant at this time at all, it just looks like i have the worst case of super-bloat ever known to man... and the size 4 jeans ain't cuttin' it anymore. so, my dear mother in her abundance of wisdom got me some maternity pants, which are actually pretty comfortable with their expandable waists. but still, like i said... no one would guess i'm pregnant at this point just by looking at me. i can still blend in and look like a bloton (we all know how much a girl loves to look like a bloton. right?).

attempting to look pregnant here. i'm 16 weeks.

no braces!! see how happy i am??

announcement- then august update.

ah, the monthly blog-date. but first. an announcement: we're expecting!! the little one is due on march 17, 2011.

that being said, the august update is as follows:

during the entirety of the month of august, chris was in tucson, arizona for work. also during the entirety of the month of august, i happened to be in the vicious throws of pregnancy sickness (so, SO not fun). i DID have an opportunity to visit mister workaholic about 2 weeks into his stay there, for about 3 days- which was nice.  tucson was actually quite pretty during my visit, and as it is far more air-conditioned than san diego is, the stay was quite pleasant temperature-wise. chris was working the night shift, so he was able to escape the heat of the day for the most part. however, this also meant that he needed to sleep during the morning hours... which just happened to coincide with the time when the worst of my pregnancy sickness would rear it's awful head. needless to say, by the time i left for home, chris was a tired, tired boy, and i am sure that he enjoyed his subsequent quiet mornings for the remainder of his time there.

also noteworthy for august- i finally got my braces off! HOORAY!!! now i look like an adult again! just in time too... according to chris, "braces are fine, and being pregnant is fine, but not together. no wife of mine is going to walk around looking like a pregnant teenager." haha, i love my husband- he is my favorite comedian. :)

regrettably, this month's blog has no pictures. my apologies. i couldn't quite find the energy to wield my camera around this month. perhaps i will have better luck over the next few weeks. ;) stay tuned for next time!!

july:

here's a monthly update of happenings, posted on time! i hope you like my less-gab-to-more-picture ratio.

july 4: independence day at my grandparents. chris and my brothers get along so well, it's kind of concerning to me.

 The boy's rendition of "the haka"

july 12: return to sea world to see sharks. and sharks only.

july 19: san diego zoo!

little pea-hen and her baby chicks. :)

july 25: chris leaves to arizona for 45 days for work. that's 6 1/2 weeks of separation (sad face from me). hey, at least we live in an age of cell phones and email. that makes things much more bearable. :)

june happenings.

greetings to bloglandia. a place rarely visited by this writer, except for once a month, apparently.
want an update anyone? here you go:

so the month of june here was relatively uneventful as far as our lives were concerned. it was nice. one of our goals for this month was to work on going on date nights- since up till now we had both been so busy we were barely finding time for eachother! luckily, summertime in san diego offers a plethora of events that are perfect for dates.

#1: we went to the del mar fair (er, "san diego county fair" if we want to be politically correct here), wherein we walked around looking at pigs, roosters, cows, and pregnant women (a lot of them! everywhere!). but lets get to the real reason for visiting the fair: THE FOOD. of which we sampled an awful array: fried avocado, fried oreos, fried kirspy kreme chicken sandwich, hamburgers, fries... oh, there was another thing, what was it....? oh yes. BBQ'd corn (almost forgot the healthy thing. who goes to the fair for the healthy things?). rest assured that someone also had a draft of alka-seltzer upon arriving back home for the evening, as he had seemed to have acquired some indigestion (i was fine).

ugh. this is exactly how i felt after the fair.

#2: a couple weeks later, chris and i had an opportunity to go downtown for dinner and a visit to seaport villiage for some touristing, after a lovely dinner at McCormick & Schmick's (thanks to phil velsor & co). it was a little damp and chilly down there at sunset, but the mist gave the lights at the village a rather whimsical twinkle. chris is still very awed by san diego, which strikes me as kinda cute. :) i guess i've never fully appreciated the city because it's all i've really known my whole life.

this dude balanced rocks for real at seaport village.

chris pretends he's got one of these on all the time. haha! :)

#3: the infamous sea world. because chris really really wanted to go. turns out that sea world isn't all that i remember it to be 17 years ago... i think the amount of kiosks and rides and such things now outnumber the amount of sea animal exhibits- which is somewhat disappointing. but i guess people like that nowadays, because the place was crowded.  anyhow, we didn't stay for very long. the shark encounter was closed and the stinging let-down was too much for both of us to handle. ;)

these guys are fun to watch.

 

piranhas anyone? they looked hungry...

other mention-worthy things that happened this month: jury duty for chris and high school graduation for my little brother grant (i'm proud of that kid).

all my sibs (except 1) at grant's graduation!