When I got engaged, it seemed like the only question people ever asked me was “How’s the wedding planning?” Fast forward a few years, add a baby bump, and the only questions you’ll hear are “When’s the baby due?” and “How are you feeling?” And not just from coworkers making small talk in the kitchen anymore. From everyone…family, friends, and random people off the streets. I realized this past weekend that my answers have all been pretty negative. It starts with a sigh, then an “Okay, I guess, considering!” on a good day, or an “Ugh! Don’t ask!” on a bad one.

It struck me that I don’t have much time left in this pregnancy, and I don’t want to look back and just remember the negatives. I don’t want to be sad that I missed out on some of the wonder of it all, because I was so focused on all the uncomfortable stuff. So, I am resolving to try to make these last 10 weeks of my pregnancy as positive as possible. Even if it just gets harder and harder. When someone asks me how I’m feeling, I am going to smile and say “Great!” Even if it’s not quite true, but maybe a positive attitude will go a long way.

Instead of complaining about the constant back pain, I will think of it as an excuse to take warm baths and naps on the weekends without feeling guilty. And I’ll be thankful that my car has heated seats that work just as well as a heating pad. Instead of cursing the heartburn that follows most of my favorite meals these days, I will be glad that I feel fine (better, even!) after eating sweets, and will keep saying “Yes, please!” to dessert. I may wake up with nosebleeds (one of those symptoms no one ever tells you about before you get pregnant), but I’ll be glad that at least I haven’t had a period since September. Instead of freaking out on the scale at the doctor’s office, I’ll marvel at the size of my new boobs. When my feet are too swollen to fit comfortably in most of my shoes, I’ll use it as an excuse to buy new ones. When I have to stop during my commute for bathroom breaks, or am battling a recurring antibiotic resistant UTI….well, I haven’t thought of how to spin that one positively yet. But, when I am sitting there and can feel a foot wedged oh-so-comfortably up under my ribs and a fist embedded in my bladder, instead of lamenting that fact, I’m going to stop and think about how pretty damn incredible it all is.

image from Babycenter.com

I’m pretty excited about having a little boy. Growing up around all girls, I never had the experience of having a brother, and spending summers with my male cousins made me a little wistful that I never would. I’m glad that any future female children of mine will have the chance to grow up with an older brother. Everyone says that little boys are messier and more difficult when they are little, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t secretly hoping to see boy parts on that 17-week ultrasound.

I’m excited about experiencing that special bond between mother and son, but I am also really looking forward to seeing Stuart interacting with and raising our boy. I think that years and years of babysitting have me going into this with more experience, and I’ll probably be the more hands-on parent to our infant, but I can’t wait to see Stuart with him as he grows from a toddler, because I just know that he’s going to be a natural with a little boy. Yes, it sounds cheesy, but he just has so much knowledge, so I think our son is lucky that he’ll be able to learn so much from him, just like Stuart learned from his dad. And, like me, his future wife will be very lucky to have a smart and handy husband!

I came across this article as I was perusing one of the thousands of parenting blogs and websites that I seem to be reading lately, and I really took it to heart. I need to remember this because I know that I will want to over analyze things, or hover, or just worry too much, because that’s what I do. I am glad that Stuart will be there to remind me how boys work, and to just chill. I think we’re going to make a pretty good team. Although I’m not crazy about the fact that Stuart will probably want to take him hunting.

Things I will not have to worry about with a son:

- Teaching him how to aim, shave, use tools, ride a bike, grill out, fix cars, and all sorts of other guy stuff

- Giving him the sex talk

- Understanding the appeal of 2026′s version of Justin Bieber

- Being on the receiving end of epic teenage girl hormonal meltdowns

Things I will have to worry about:

- That skinny jeans will be back in style and he will think they look good on him

- That he will think it’s funny to do any of the things that might land him injured and/or on Tosh.0

- That one day he’s going to grow up and get married and start his own family and won’t be Mama’s little boy anymore

I remember taking this first picture and thinking that I looked huge. Actually, I remember thinking that about all the pictures at the time. Now I’m looking back even at 19 weeks and going…the bump is so small!

13 Weeks:

15 Weeks:

17 Weeks:

19 Weeks:

20 Weeks (with my first baby):

22 Weeks:

25 Weeks (at my first baby shower):

According to the 26-week email update, my baby now weighs about a pound and a half. So according to my calculations, my baby bump consists of 1.5 pounds baby, 18.5 pounds Peanut Butter Snickers (the best snack on the planet). Yes, that means I have gained 20 pounds already. I almost choked at the doctor’s office when I stepped on the scale. And then fainted when the doctor said that was right on track, and that I should gain about 15 more.

This weight gain thing has been a little hard for me to adjust to. I have always been pretty small…I’m 5’1″ and my weight is usually somewhere between 95 (around bathing suit season) and 100 pounds (around the holidays). There were the times where I ballooned up to 105 lbs in college when I was drinking beer and eating pizza every meal, and then the time I dropped down to 90-92 pounds while I was planning the wedding and I was too stressed to eat, but for the most part it’s stayed pretty constant.

I was 99 pounds when I got pregnant in September, and I feel like I started gaining weight right away because I had to stop skipping meals. I had to have something in my stomach at all times, or the nausea was almost unbearable. I admit that I did not have the healthiest relationship with food prior to my pregnancy, and I would often skip meals or drastically cut calories for a quick way to lose weight, even if the only person who thought that I needed to lose weight was me. When I was in the midst of my Skeletor phase, as Stuart called it, during the wedding planning, I started keeping a calorie counting diary online. I had to stop that because it was becoming a dangerous game…how few calories could I eat each day? I put some weight back on after the wedding, but I still liked having a prominent collarbone and hip bones.

Then I got pregnant, and the hip bones were the first to go. The valley between them gradually rounded until I couldn’t hide it anymore. Or button my pants. I resisted buying maternity clothes for the longest time. I’d loop a hair elastic through the buttonhole on my jeans and use that as an extender, and then I used a BellaBand to hide the fact that I could no longer even zip my jeans anymore. When I finally made the switch to maternity jeans, I couldn’t believe that I’d waited so long. They are so comfortable! I don’t know if I want to go back to ever having to zip up my jeans again!

I’m kind of enjoying the baby bump now that I feel like it is obvious that I am pregnant, and not just chubby. Random people are starting to comment on it, and so far I have resisted the urge to mess with them by saying, “What baby?” Now I am only worried about after the baby is born. Right now it’s easier to accept the weight gain because I know there is a baby in there, but after delivery it’ll just be fat, and I am worried about how I am going to react to that, given my past issues with food. I guess the only thing I can do for the moment is just be glad that I have a supportive husband who tells me almost every day that he thinks I look good and that he likes me more curvy, and just hope that the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn will distract me from my stomach. And wear this.

Once again, it’s been a million years since my last update, so even though I probably have no readers left, I have some news. We will have another new addition to the family in June. But this time, we are 99% sure that it has two legs instead of four. And hopefully won’t be covered in fur. Yes, I’m pregnant!

I will be 21 weeks on Friday, and it’s a BOY! Having five sisters, I am not quite sure what to even do with a little boy, but I guess I will learn fast. Stuart is thrilled. He said he would have been happy with either, but I know he is really glad it’s a boy.

In the early weeks,  I thought that maybe I was going to get lucky and escape the morning sickness, because although I was exhausted (and I mean completely wiped out, going to bed at 7 p, bone-tired), I wasn’t sick to my stomach. Well, I spoke too soon. The nausea hit me between weeks seven and eight. I wasn’t hurling my guts out, but it definitely wasn’t just morning sickness. It was all day, constant nausea, and most of the times I did throw up happened to be at night. Eating made me feel slightly better, so I had to eat every few hours, and gained a few pounds right off the bat (oh, the trauma of the weight gain…I am saving that for a whole separate post). I finally started to feel better after about week 17. After feeling consistently crappy every day for over two months, waking up and feeling almost normal was a foreign but wonderful feeling.  I still get nauseated if I go too long without eating, but I am feeling a million times better now. I’m starting to enjoy the pregnancy now, since I am feeling better, and have mostly come to terms with the weight gain. I have started feeling his little fluttering movements (especially last night when I was browsing nursery stuff…he must have known I was shopping for him), and doing things like planning out the nursery and picking out names makes it seem real and exciting.

Here’s our little Biscuit:

More updates to come, I promise!

Hi, remember me? I am back from Hiatus #I-Lost-Count, with some exciting, yet slightly bittersweet news. My Bug, Lola, has a new owner. She was the surprise guest at a teenage girl’s Sweet 16 party, and Stuart finally got his way, and now I am driving a four-door car deemed suitable for future children:

But no dogs. This car is too nice for dogs. Actually – it might be too nice for children.

That’s right. It’s a Buick. But this is not your grandmother’s Buick! It’s a 2011 Buick Regal, and my very first brand new car ever. Also – my very first car payment.

It has all leather interior (black, although you can’t tell from this picture). Yes – I went with the black leather again. I obviously don’t learn. In that respect anyway….I am definitely staying away from drive-thrus with yellow poles, though!

It was assembled in Germany and drives like a German car….fast, smooth and luxurious. It definitely makes my commute much more tolerable, although I have to be careful to set the cruise control. It has XM radio and OnStar (or BigBrother, as I call it).

Using BigBrother is always quite the experience. You would think that by now, they would have voice recognition software that can actually distinguish words like “Stuart” from “Goodbye,” but no. And after continuing to ask if the number I said is one that I actually want to dial, even though I’d answered in the affirmative a million times, it’s finally started responding to “Yes, goddammit!”

I haven’t used the navigation feature much, because in order to get directions, you push the button and tell BigBrother what you’re looking for, and turn-by-turn directions are beamed right to your car. It comes in handy if you don’t know the address of the place you’re going and want them to look something up for you, but I still prefer my TomTom most of the time, because my TomTom doesn’t judge. I am seriously directionally challenged, and I feel like BigBrother will beam over my directions, and then make a bunch of snide comments like, “Seriously? These places are seven miles from her house – what’s wrong with her?” and “We’ve had to beam her these directions a million times, how long does it take her to learn?”

I am also not quite sure that they aren’t spying on me even when I haven’t pushed their talk button;  I like to sing loudly and off-key along to the XM radio in order to discourage this. And with the XM radio, I can always find something to sing along to, to their utter delight, I’m sure.

So while I am thoroughly enjoying my new car, I still felt a little pang of sadness when I watched Lola drive away. I didn’t even think to take a picture or hug her goodbye before she left!

But now that it’s bye-bye Bug, hello Buick – what do I call my blog?? LovesBuick just doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Also – the car needs a name.

I went to see Van Morrison in concert for my 21st birthday and it was the best birthday of my life. “Take It Easy” by the Eagles was my favorite song as a kid (and I still love it). I actually liked the SuperBowl halftime shows with The Who, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. I loved it when the classic rock station dubbed October 13th “Rhymin’ Paul Simon Day” and played only Paul Simon songs in honor of his birth. I think “Mr. Tambourine Man” makes an awesome lullaby and plan on singing it to my future children. When playing American Idol on my friend’s Wii, I was the only one who wanted to sing “Paint it Black.” So when I got the Ticketmaster email update and saw Stephen Stills was coming to the House of Blues in April, for a fleeting second I thought, “Oh that sounds fun…wonder if anyone wants to go with me.” And then I remembered – no. No one will want to go with me to that. Because my friends aren’t 60. And now I know that I deserve to keep getting AARP membership cards, life insurance policy offers, and cremation contest entry forms in the mail.

Tangent alert: My mom told me a story about the time her cousin was on a plane and struck up a conversation with her seatmate. He said that he was one of the Eagles, and she says (in a Texas accent) “Oh I just love that song about Winslow, Arizona…” and he says, “No, I’m one of the Philadelphia Eagles.” I really really wish I could have been on that flight to see and hear that!

…if “Taking The Longest Amount of Time Possible To Get Down A Green Slope,” was an event. Who am I kidding? I’d not only qualify, I would be world record holder. I’d receive style points for traveling a good distance down on my ass, backwards, or both, and I’d take a gold medal in bitching and tears as well.

Stuart and I went to visit my dad in Denver in early January, with the express purpose of skiing. Stuart had been before, but this would be my first attempt, not counting a 30-minute stint when I was nine, when I decided that I hated it so much that I’d rather be the only nine-year-old in daycare at the lodge because my parents wouldn’t let my sister and me stay in the room by ourselves. With past history flashing through my head, I became increasingly nervous as the plane got closer to the Denver airport.

After we arrived, we went back to my dad’s house so I could pick through my stepsisters’ snow gear and put together enough warm clothes so that hopefully I would return to Florida sporting the same number of fingers and toes I left with.

Once I was satisfactorily styled as the love child of Stay Puft the Marshmellow Man and a Smurf, it was time to head to Echo Mountain for my first lesson.

Walking out to the lesson, I was just praying that I didn’t fall before I even got my skis on. There was one other couple for the first part of my lesson; when I saw that one half of the couple was the girl who had spent the past hour trying on every pair of ski boots in the rental shop, I felt a little better about myself.

We got out there, put our skis on, learned how to kind of walk/glide in them, and then the girl announced she needed a break and sat down in the snow for 45 minutes, before making her boyfriend take her back to the rental shop. Even though my calves were screaming and it seemed like I had to breathe twice as hard to get half as much air into my lungs, I vowed that I was going to stick it out just because I knew I could do better than she did. And I guess I did – I learned how to turn occasionally, even though more often than not I happened to turn in the opposite direction of where I meant to go, and I kind of learned how to snowplow. And that was it. The instructor cut me loose and said I could go on the big slopes if I wanted to. I gaped at her and wondered if maybe the altitude had gotten to her brain too – my head was throbbing so hard it was making me sick to my stomach, and I was pretty sure I was going to pass out right on the “barely a bunny slope” that we were on. So I may have succumbed to the altitude sickness, but damn it, I made it through the whole two-hour lesson before doing so!

Don’t I look professional? It’s the goggles.

We drove from Echo Mountain to a cute little mountain town called Frisco where my dad had rented a condo for the weekend, and the plan was to ski Copper Mountain Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday morning I tried to sleep in as long as possible, in hopes of shortening the day, but eventually had to get up. We took the free bus to the mountain, and on the way there, I told my dad and husband that I didn’t want to go on any big hills – I just wanted to go on the bunny slopes and practice, since I really felt in no way prepared enough to do any actual skiing. They said OK, we got our lift tickets, and headed to the slopes, with them assuring me that green meant easiest. About halfway up the lift, I learned that their definition of green and mine differed greatly. See the green circle below? That was my idea of a bunny slope. See the yellow circle? That’s where the lift dropped us off.

“There’s only one way down,” they said to me, as if that piece of news would cure my hyperventilation. “Ski patrol?” I asked hopefully. Negative, they answered, gliding down the mountain like agile Norwegians as I stared on in abject horror.

I tried to follow, picked up a little speed, got terrified, tried to snowplow, crossed skis, and face-planted. Lather, rinse, repeat. It took us three and a half hours to get down the mountain, with me moaning “I can’t do it!” continuously, and “Leave me here to die,” every time we passed an emergency telephone. I’d fall, try to get back up, and eventually Stuart would just lift me by the scruff of my neck and plant me back on my feet, only to have to do it again five feet below.

I had one cannonball run, where I had gathered so much speed that I could not stop myself, and Stuart and my dad, who were behind me, just couldn’t catch me. It was the scariest moment of my life. I was totally out of control, careening down the mountainside screaming “No brakes!!!!” I came to a fork in the trail and didn’t know which way to go, so I just threw myself down and sat there trembling until they caught up to me.

Eventually, the bottom of the hill was in sight. “Just head for the bar,” my “coaches” urged. I thought the bottom was pretty terrifying in its own way, because of all the potential targets skiiers, snowboarders and children (children!! gliding by like pros – mocking me!) in my way, but I made it, jumped out of my skis, and did not look back as I headed straight for the bar to order a $6 Blue Moon.

The bar had a band playing live music and was packed with people all walking with the distinctive ski boot swagger. I looked around and announced that this would be where I spent my Sunday – they could do all the skiing they wanted, but I was in no way, shape or form repeating that fiasco. I’d park myself at the bar, listen to live music, watch some football, read a book, knit a sweater, wash dishes, bus tables, basically do anything that wasn’t skiing. It would be like day care all over again, except this time, with beer.

We headed back to the condo where I went straight to the jacuzzi bath to soak. Stuart came in to check on me after about an hour, to make sure I hadn’t drowned myself in an attempt to avoid any further skiing. My hips were beginning to turn black and blue, and every muscle in my body started screaming “Eff you!” while waving their middle fingers at me, punishing me for what I had forced them to endure on the slopes. It hurt to breathe.

Fast forward to the morning. The altitude was obviously still messing with my brain, because I actually agreed to give it one more shot. But I warned them that if they tricked me again and took me back up to the top of the mountain, I was throwing myself off. Because I am nothing if not dramatic when I don’t want to do something.

So we went to the real bunny slopes so I could build up some confidence, and I actually made it down multiple times without falling. I was even turning correctly, and in the direction I meant to go. “Eat my powder, suckers!” I taunted as I skied circles around the seven-year-olds.

Stuart and my dad decided I was ready to go back up the mountain, and I didn’t resist. I was not going back up to the top, but I agreed to go on the green slope that was not as high nor as steep. And I did fine. I fell less than 10 times that entire day, and while I wouldn’t say that I actually fell in love with skiing, I was pretty proud of myself that I got back out there and did it, and was actually okay at it. The beers at the end of the run that day tasted especially sweet…like victory!

I totally came up with this idea years ago. I was having trouble dipping my fries in ketchup on my road trips to and from Miami, especially with a stick shift. It was so much easier to dunk Chick-fil-A’s waffle fries (mmmmm…….waffle fries……..) into their bbq sauce containers, and I spent hours pondering why no one had come up with that idea for ketchup packets yet. Although, I guess ketchup is pretty behind the times, what with them introducing a squeeze bottle that is stored upside down just a few years ago. Seriously – how did it take so long for them to come up with that idea?

We’ve had a couple new additions to our household since I’ve been on hiatus. This makes life much easier:

This, does not:

But I guess she’s more entertaining. Maybe. The mixer is pretty amazing. And easy to clean up after. And rewarding. And so attractive! What was I talking about, again? How much we love our new dog? Oh yes…

This is Lucy. We got her from the shelter about two weeks before Christmas. We think she’s a coonhound/beagle mix, and probably about a year old. She’s too good to be a full-fledged beagle, and she has treed a few squirrels already (Koby’s ideal woman). We’d been talking about getting a friend for Koby for a while, since Yoda’s become too sick to play with him, and Koby has been pretty lonely. We went to the shelter one day “just to look,” but of course, we just couldn’t leave her there. She came to us pretty much housebroken, thankfully, and immediately started trying to take up as much room as possible on the couch.

Koby and Lucy have become fast friends. Even though Koby outweighs Lucy by about 30 lbs, she has no problem jumping up and tackling him and stealing his stuff. They are pretty cute together though, which almost makes up for having to accept the fact that my house will never stay clean for longer than an hour again.

And best of all, she’s a cuddler. I guess that’s the only thing my KitchenAid mixer can’t do: cuddle me back.