Exhausted doesn't even begin to cut it

Before I left for our trip, I hardly felt pregnant at all. Wasn't sick, sore or too tired. My daily schedule was altered in no way. Gym, errands, lunch, chores, make dinner, eat dinner, bathtime, bedtime, hang out with Matt, dishes, bed. Somewhere along the way in Disney World that all got ripped away from me. I'm sick, exhausted, clumsy, irritable, disorganized, unable to complete menial tasks, and exhausted. Oh, and I'm really tired all.the.time. I feel like I have mono or something. I'll try to clean something and I spill something in the process, making an even bigger mess & reducing me to hysterical, hormonal tears. At least that's how today went. I spent 5 precious child-free hours, not resting like I should have been, but trying in vain to groom our dog. After five hours I had her face, paws & tummy pretty good, but the rest of her body looked as though she had escaped from a leper colony.





Poor little bean. Five hours! I'm not even joking. I hate feeling like this, but the consensus is that in my current state, I can't be expected to bounce right back from going mach 5 dawn to dusk at Disney World for four days straight. My body has even been so kind as to contact some delightfully vague sickness as a plea for me to rest a bit. Grrrrrrr. Body? Have you met me?? It is physically impossible for me to rest if my house is icky or I have shish I need to be doing.
Well, after five futile hours, Matt came home, made dinner (again) & told me to take Sylvie to PetSmart and have them finish her up.






Here are the shockingly non-fluffernutter results.
To summarize: shiddy day, I'm exhausted, my husband is marvelous, please bless tomorrow is better.

- Posted from my iPhone

Some observations

When you're pregnant at Disney World, there are not a lot of rides you can go on. This makes for lots of time to sit & people-watch, something I've tried to limit recently as it tends to make me overly judgemental, irritable & generally not nice. However, I've decided on this occasion to just go with it. Here are a few things I've decided must be addressed:
1) there are basically 3 types of shorts, regardless of your age, sex or fitness level.
Short Number 1-shorts for public use. These include those that come to mid-thigh or lower for women, and for men knee-length, no longer. Capris are never ok on men. At least not that I've seen.








Short Number 2- shorts for exercising in. These do NOT in anyway involve denim. If you do not exercise at home enough to own & pack proper gym attire, don't try to start a workout program on vacation.
Short Number 3- shorts for sleeping in. If your butt cheeks are coming out the bottom of your shorts, that means you are wearing this type of short, and have two options: going back to bed, or changing your clothes. Please do not subject anyone to looking at your butt cheeks. Unfortunatley I wasn't able to get a picture of any, as I was afeared of encouraging them.








These are rather band-aid looking, dontcha think?
2)This is supposed to be the happiest place on earth, and believe me, it has the potential to be. But when parents make their schedules more important than their child's needs, they're just setting themselves up for the most irritable day on earth. I speak from experience as well as obsevation. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to fight the urge to turn around to some stranger & berate them for being a complete JERK to their kid(s). You'd never treat anyone else that way. Why is it okay for you to speak to a precious child on loan from God that way? It's not.
3)These are an abomination.








If you must have a double stroller, please go vertical rather than horizontal. I for one am buckin' for one of those "sit'n stand" thingers. Genius.
4)Dear Disney: ambient noise & music & sound effects have their place. They can add to the feel of an environment, but after 8 days of constant noise, plus the noise of an insane amount of people, they can drive a person a wee bit crazy. Like if-I-see-one-more-effing-Mickey-head-I'm-going-to-black-both-his-eyes-and-bloody-his-nose crazy.
5)Costco, the airport, the mall & amusement parks. What do these places have in common? The severe need to have traffic lanes painted on the pedestrian walkways. Matt always says "it's like cars." Meaning that we should walk on the right, pass on the left (when visibility allows), do not stop in the middle of the street, no walking while texting. And we've really got to come up with some sort of signalling system.
6)We may not be in a library, but there is a certain level of consideration for others that demands that you don't let your kids run around screaming. You'd be surprised at the variety of venues I've witnessed this at. Restaurants. Hotel hallways. Lobbies. Airplanes. Airports. Public restrooms. Stores.
7)And my perennial favorite: smoking.
These things must go.
I wish I had a big, huge trebuchet so that I could fling all of these things right into Cinderella's castle & watch it all go down in the inferno. Phew.

I think I'm tapped out.

But don't get me wrong. This was an amazing, fun, unforgettable trip that I'm ridiculously grateful for. I'll post about that later though. I had to get these things off my chest.

- Posted from my iPhone

Don't worry, you'll be hearing A LOT more about this.

I'm going to have this baby boy naturally, and am preparing by taking hypnobirthing classes to learn to fully relax & trust my body to do what God (perfectly) designed it to do. It is life-changingly amazing.
Yesterday I WAY overdid it at Epcot & was in tears over my backpain as I tried to go to sleep. Matt suggested (after attempting to give me a massage, bless his heart) that I try some of the relaxation techniques so that I could at least get some sleep, and I swear on all I hold dear that I have ZERO pain today. A few deep breaths, some visualizations, and I was asleep, but I did not expect to wake up chipper & ready to go like this. All this hypno-voodoo is true. I have a testimony of it. Fear = tension = pain & that is one train I'm determined to not jump on with this birth.
Soooo now that I've come out of the natural childbirth closet, please, if you could, do NOT regale me with your stories of excruciating pain, failed attempts at going au naturale, or c-sections, etc. I don't want my brain in that city.
Ok, so now we're off to breakfast in cinderella's castle with all the princesses. Proof that I'm not a hippy.

- Posted from my iPhone

And we're off!

Tomorrow morning we are leaving for eight days in Florida/the Bahamas/Florida again. We'll spend Saturday in Orlando, then board the Disney Wonder Sunday morning & cruise around for a few, then take the party to Disney World for another four days. Talk about spoiled. Did I mention that Matt's ever so generous momma is taking their whole family? The Davis' are always non-stop entertaining as well. I'm ridiculously excited. I plan on doing very little besides resting my pregnant bones blissfully in the pool while reading the billion books I've been slowly nibbling at. As well as doing a fair bit of culinary nibbling, too.
(on a side note, Cold Mountain is a beautiful movie & Jude Law is too hot for words.)
So yeah, I'm gonna take a bit of a break. I look forward to devouring all y'alls blogs upon returning, so have some good stuff for me.
Don't be too jealous, m'kay?


- Posted from my iPhone

Am I gonna be dealing with this his whole life?

My neighbor just came over to visit & we talked about what we were thinking of naming the baby. As she left as refered to him as Abraham. I don't know if she misheard me or what, but ewww. Are people gonna call him Abraham? It's ABRAM. Not Abraham.


- Posted from my iPhone

(500) Days of Summer

Freaking fantastic.


- Posted from my iPhone

Christmas & good stuff about Sylvie (aka Fluffernutter)

Christmas was really, really fun this year. Sawyer is at such a magical age, and it's so easy to get swept up in her excitement. My family did a secret Santa thing for my sister's kids on Christmas eve, it was really fun to see them open their gifts and no one, including their parents had any idea where the gifts came from. My cute brother & his cute wife organized it, it was so fun to see them, I absolutely adore Doug & if he doesn't watch it, he's gonna get a baby boy named after him. At least the middle name, we're solid on that, we just can't agree on a first. I vote for Abram Douglas, and Matt wants to use his mission president's middle name somehow; Steele. I really like it, and you couldn't ask for a cooler person to be named after, but I've been sold on Abram since I was 13... But anyway, this is Doug with his punk-rock hair & lumberjack facial hair combo. Not too many people could pull this look off like he does. My parent's had had Sylvie for the last two weeks before Christmas, and totally fell in love with her. But that night we were going to be up there at their house, so that day I had to run up to their house & take Sylvie to our friends, the Williams' until Sawyer fell asleep. My parents came up to spend the night & open gifts with us in the morning. As long as I can remember we've lined up in the hall on Christmas morning for a little photo-op, youngest to oldest. It's a tradition I hope to keep up. (do you like Matt's newly cue-balled noggin? me too. Bald guys are hot. don't think so? let me illustrate my point: Bruce Willis- so much hotter bald. Patrick Stewart. Old? Yes. But try picturing him with hair. yuck. Kelly Slater? you don't know him, but you want to. Google is good. Vin Diesel? Say what you want about his acting, but he's quite tasty. Chris Daugtry. no explanation needed. except for his sideburns. WTH is going on there? Billy Zane. Yup, I win this little argument, now back to Christmas.)
We saved the puppy surprise until after Sawyer had opened all her other gifts. She got a super cute puppet theater, an "ice-skater doll", legos, movies, clothes, perfume & makeup, and a few dog accessories that made her decide that "one day I won't be 'llergic to dogs". She also got to open the gift that told us that we were having a boy!! I made two little shirts, one said "it's a boy," the other said "it's a girl" and took them to our ultrasound on Tuesday. We made the ultrasound tech put the appropriate shirt in a box & throw the other one away. It was really fun, she thought it was the greatest idea. I'm proud to say that none of us cheated, and that we all found out together that it is a little boy squirming around in there. Here is the video:

I would have been sooo surprised if it were a girl, I don't know how I knew, but I did. The first trimester was a little different than it was with Sawyer, a tad more prone to nausea, but now that I'm solidly into my 2nd, I don't really notice a difference. Sawyer wasn't really thrilled with the news, but she's okay with it now. I think my explanation that you get twice as many toys to play with if you have a brother sufficed for her. Plus we've been talking about people we know who have brothers, her cousins & friends & even me, and how fun they are, and she's getting excited.
Even more exciting is the fact that my good friend Laura, who has been trying to get pregnant for 4 1/2 years is finally knocked up again! I seriously cry nearly every time I think about it! I love you, Lola!
Anyway, back to Christmas. So, after Sawyer had opened all her gifts, Matt said that he thought that Santa had left one more present upstairs under her tree, so she hauled her cookies up there nearly flipped out when she saw a big fluffy poodle in her room! It was so much fun because we've been so sad about Charlie & Sawyer talks about her all the time. One day she was having a really rough go of it & in the middle of a tantrum, just sunk down on the floor & said, in between hiccups "...and I just wanna go 'nuggle Carlie!" oh for the love of my broken heart! Anyway, like I said in my last post, it been a few days to adjust. For me at least. But honestly, we really are so super lucky to have struck canine gold again. It's hard for everyone to believe that she's only 5 months old. Sylvie is so calm & sweet. She LOVES playing in the snow, and does her best to lure you out there with her, coming close to the door like she's going to come in, then as soon as you're close, she darts away, challenging you to chase her & kick snow in her face. She loves it I tell you. She struggles at coming when called, but it took us about a day & a half to teach her to sit, so I think we'll probably have that down in a few days too. She's got this super fluffy hair right now. Their hair doesn't turn all curly & poodle-y until they're about a year old, and so she looks like those lambskin rugs at Costco right now. Like someone killed a polar bear & draped it on a really skinny dog. She's a dream to pet. When it get's a little funky & starts to mat, I comb it out & she just lays there patiently while I work on her for like an hour. It's so calming. That's one thing we've missed the most; that repetitive motion is good for Matt & I's anxiety & depression. She's way fun with Sawyer too, she really loves her, and even takes orders from her. Sawyer asks me about 40 times a day if she can "teach her to sit & give her a treat". It's so fun to see that interaction again. I'm sorry about the last post, clearly I've got comparison issues and they don't just apply to myself. It's been good for me though to realize that it's so freeing just to love someone for who they are, and that my dear is what I'm taking into this new year. And guess who I'm applying it to? Me. Yup. That's my new year's resolution. To be nicer to me. Selfish? Maybe. But I've got a hankering that tells me that I'll be able to be nicer to others by doing this. I'll let you know how it goes.
Merry Christmas & a ridiculously Happy New Year to you. You deserve it.