Chicago loves Emily...

...and the feeling is mutual!

But first, a sidenote about my dog.

We had to board the dogs while we went to Chicago, and we don't usually like to board them at the Buckeystown vet because they always come back with some sort of illness (Bordatella, eye infections, ear infections etc.) I think it's a racket, they infect your dogs with a disease so that you'll have to come back and pay them to fix it. Jokes on them though, because I use a different vet! I'm still out hundreds of bucks though, so maybe the joke is on me :-(

Anyway, this time we had to board them at the vet because I have been putting off their shots and they were due for a bunch, so it was board them at a vet where the shots could be given, or don't board them at all. This brought our total from hundreds of bucks to millions of bucks.

Now when I dropped Remy off, his tail was in good working order. When I picked him up yesterday, he was cleaner and had shorter nails, but his tail was certainly not functioning correctly. Whereas it usually stands out at a jaunty angle, waving proudly like a fluffy flag, it now droops down like wilted celery. I have felt it and I don't think it hurts him, but it just hangs there, and when it is called upon to wag, it does so from it's depressingly limp position. I'm not sure what to do, because he doesn't seem to be in pain, but my dog is undeniably different. If I called the vet and said "my dog's tail isn't working", they would probably just laugh at me. So I guess I'll watch him the next couple of days and hope it returns to its previous glory soon.

So back to our trip. It was great! We went up to Chicago on Thursday for one of Will's annual newspaper conferences, and we took Emily along for the ride. She was fantastic on the plane, eating at all the right times (so her ears would pop) and eagerly looking around at all the new people in the meantime. She continued to be great through dinner, allowing Will and I to celebrate our 4th anniversary at Sushi Samba (although I think she is probably the first baby who has ever been to that restaurant), and afterward when we went to get our favorite fat free frozen yogurt at the Maple St. Market.

I had figured that I wouldn't be able to take my usual approach to Chicago with a baby in tow (that is, walk every day until I drop), but once again, Emily was great and happily hung in the Bjorn or sat in her stroller for hours while Tina and I went to all my favorite places. Along the way, we were CONSTANTLY told how good and cute Emily was by complete strangers. Gotta love Chicago! She won over the snooty clerk at the Vosges haut chocolate boutique, and even got a smile from the male sales assistant at Sephora who seemed to really enjoy his employee discount. I know what you're thinking, yes I love to shop at Sephora even though I usually look like hell...I have a thing for buying makeup to keep under my bathroom sink.

We even got to go check out the "Men's Health Urbanathalon" in Grant Park, which is like a marathon but the competitors also jump taxis and climb walls. Poor Will wanted to go SO badly, but he was in conferences all day. I got him a T-shirt and a do-rag though, so that he can be a poser and make people think he was there.

On Saturday, we left the babe with the mother-in-law and went out with the other young conference-goers. It was really nice to be able to do that, and we saw Jack McBrayer while we were out! Yeah, I had to look up his name, but he is in Talladega Nights and 30 Rock, so he counts as a celebrity :-)

The only wrench in our plans came as we were leaving. With a baby and no carseat, it was not a good idea to take a taxi or a hired car (although in retrospect we probably could have gotten one with a carseat) so we relied on the "L" to get around. On the way to the airport, our train got to within 7 stops of O'Hare, then had some technical difficulties. We sat for 20 minutes, but because the doors were open and traffic was screaming by on either side, we couldn't hear the announcements about what was wrong. Finally we got going again, and we made it 2 stops. Then they announced that because of construction, everyone had to get off, exit the station, board shuttle busses, get bussed to the next station, and then board another train and continue from there. With a baby and luggage? When you're anxiously trying to get to an airport in time to catch a plane? When there had been no warning or sign explaining this situation at any previous station? Were they joking?

Sadly they were not.

So we dutifully dragged everything off the train, up the stairs, got crammed onto the bus, dragged it back down the stairs where we were assured a train was waiting for us (by "waiting", they meant "would be here in 8-ish minutes") and then completed our journey at a peppy 6 mph due to the construction on the lines. When we finally dashed into the airport, 2 hours after leaving the city (it usually takes 45 minutes), checked in, got through security, and found our gate, we had time to bold down half a sandwich and then it was time to board. Needless to say, we were fairly beside ourselves. And there's no room to be beside yourself on a plane.

The unfortunate Randalls, who had hired a car and left before us, were actually still in line at the ticketing counter when we got checked in, because United had taken the liberty of cancelling their tickets.

We all made it onto the plane though, the only bad side effect being that we were in terrible moods, and Emily was being whiney and shouty. We finally figured out that it was because she had a soaking wet diaper (we of course hadn't had time to change her before the flight) and once we changed her she just laid there like an angel, looking in wonder at her hands and the underside of the tray table. This gave me a chance to recover from my stress-induced headache as I watched out the window with relief as the land went from flat to wrinkly to mountainy. I even got to see the new FNP building from the air. Our landing was smooth, and our exit of the airport was expeditious, and all in all, things worked out quite well.

Oh, and Emily has a tooth now! What a good teether she is, we've had one or two bouts of fussiness over the issue, but all in all she's been amazing, and it's even more amazing that we were travelling when it came in and she was still her usual happy self the whole time.

So now we have to figure out whether we want to tempt fate again and take her to the conference in Aruba in February. I'd love to go, but it is a longer flight.

I'll post some pictures in a couple minutes when I get them loaded onto the computer. Right now Emily is trying to eat my face and kick the laptop to the floor so I think she's hungry.

-Sara

On Babies, Enchanted Ropes and Rats

As of tomorrow, Emily will officially be 4 months old! She'll be almost 18 weeks though, so that's confusing. I never really cared that a month has more than 28 days (except for February, and then only 3/4 of the time) until this whole pregnancy/childrearing thing. For the past year I have been measuring time in weeks instead of months, and that just confuses everyone. If someone tells you they're 27 weeks pregnant, do you know off the top of your head how many months that is? I think that every month should have exactly 4 weeks, and then with the extra days we're left with at the end of the year we can just party for a month. I think there was some society in the past that actually did that, but I can't remember who. Probably because they're not around anymore. I guess that doesn't bode well for my partying idea.

But Emily is doing well, for her 4-month birthday we are getting her...3 shots! Poor baby. I'm not quite as beside myself as I was in the days leading up to her 2 month vaccinations, but I worry because she's so much more aware of her surroundings now. I am anxious to see how much she weighs now though, and to see what the pediatrician thinks about starting her on solid foods. I don't plan to start her until she's 5 months, but all summer I've been making and freezing baby food for her and I'm excited that soon I'll be able to feed it to her and see her reactions to different flavors.

Also I've been playing around with cloth diapers, and it's actually really fun! I know most of you won't believe me, but it can be very addictive (researching diapers, finding good deals on pretty ones to add to your "stash", figuring out which fabrics are the nicest) so that's kind of my hobby now. Being a stay-at-home mom is keeping me super busy, and I don't actually do all that much staying at home.

Last week was Will's birthday, so we went to the new sushi restaurant that is on Carroll Creek on Thursday night, Hinode. It was tasty, but you can tell it just opened. The service was slow and the servers not very knowledgable, plus they don't yet have the rope that will allow them to serve alcohol to their outside diners. That is so weird to me, is it a miraculous enchanted rope that will keep out would-be underage drinkers? Will people who drink too much inside the roped-off area automatically become sober and not bother anyone else once they cross back over the rope? I'll have to ask the mayor the next time I see him.

On Saturday we went to the Lebanese Taverna in Baltimore. It was excellent as always, big thanks to Michelle for introducing us to our new favorite restaurant! After dinner we all walked to Oliver the Wharf Rat (a bar) and actually SAW a wharf rat on the way there! I don't think I've ever seen a wild rat before. We also saw a giant cockroach (the likes of which I HAVE seen before, in our old College Park apartment, yick!), and while we were sitting outside the bar we saw a poor pregnant lady's car break down in the middle of Pratt street. The guy behind her laid on his horn for a minute and a half straight (seriously, it was almost an entire light cycle) and strangely enough, all that honking didn't fix her car. Eventually some chivalrous gentlemen braved the Pratt street traffic to push her over to the side of the road. In the meantime, the gentlemen we were with took a break from gawking at the traffic disaster and went to get more beer. I can't complain though, Will did bring me another diet coke. And they say chivalry is dead.

-Sara

I traded my pipette for a basinett

Ok, so since I last posted there have been 3 more wall shrimp incidents, but they all occurred in that same week and Will took care of the last 3 :-* There must have been some sort of migration (the week of the centipede) and if so, I hope they were migrating further away from me! But this post won't be all about wall shrimp, one post dedicated to the subject was more than enough.

This post will be about my new job as a stay at home mom! Yes, I officially quit last week after putting it off for quite some time. My boss was very sad, and that made me sad so for the first day or so I just kinda felt down which was a surprise to me. But then I came to my senses and have been excited about it since then. I would still be on maternity leave now though, so it probably won't feel REAL until July 30th which would have been my first day back. The decision was A LOT harder than I thought it would be considering how much I didn't like my job. My boss offered to let me come back just 1 or 2 days a week with the understanding being that I would only run the metals analyses, but I KNEW that as soon as someone went on vacation it would be "Sara, you know how to do BODs, would you mind doing them just while Trish is gone?". And I, being completely incapable of saying no to anyone (I once gave my number to a Latin American construction worker in Rockville because I felt bad saying no...poor Walter) would do it, and then it would become my job, and then things would get stressful again. So I just cut the cord completely and said "no" once to avoid having to say it a bunch of times in the future.

So now here I am, at home with Emily, and I am happy as can be but not sure what to do to be GOOD at my new job. If you work at a place outside the home you tend to have bosses or coworkers who you can watch and learn from, but I don't have other moms raising kids at my house who I can watch and learn from. Sure I clean the house and play with her and take care of her, but I feel like to be a real stay at home mom I need to find a playgroup or some sort of activity for her. I looked into Gymboree, but the location in Frederick is closing in 2 weeks. I'm "...more than welcome to attend classes at the Silver Spring location" though. No thanks. A weekly 2 hour roundtrip car ride with an infant just to lay her on the floor and clap at her doesn't sound like a great idea to me, even if it does get her some social interaction. She's too young to go play on a playground yet, and I doubt she'd hold still for a storytime at the library or a bookstore, but she doesn't have any cousins (and none forthcoming in the foreseeable future) so I feel like I need to find some kids her age for her to play with. Maybe it's too early to be worrying about that but oh God, if she doesn't get social stimulation she won't join clubs or teams in high school and no ivy league school will accept her! I'm ruining her life already!

Seriously though, as a parent of a very young child, it's all on you and playmates seem to be hard to find. I know there are babies out there somewhere, I saw them at the hospital! If only she had exchanged numbers with some of the other kids in the nursery.

I also have realized that I tend to view Emily as a special circumstance when it comes to going out. By that I mean when friends go out to do something social, I tend to decline because I have a baby, the same way you would decline if you had out of town relatives staying at your house, or if you were sick. You know, special circumstances. Well I have come to a realization that Emily is now the new normal, so if I want to go out I should because I'll need to figure it out eventually. It helps that Emily has 2 grandmas and several aunts in the area who are all scrambling to take care of her as often as possible, but I just feel bad leaving her. I love being a mommy, Emily and I are buddies and she is the only person in the world other than Will who I can spend 24 hours a day with and not get sick of. However it isn't healthy to stay penned up in the house with the baby all the time, so to avoid becoming a hopeless bore I need to learn to wrangle her in public better so that I can go out and do more stuff, and I need to learn to leave her more often so that I can maintain some semblance of a social life.

Well, I was going to tell my fabulous story of having to get my new car (yes, we got a FAMILY car to hold all of Emily's stuff...a Toyota Highlander Hybrid) jump-started while it was sitting in my garage, but that's kind of a long story and this post is pretty long already. Just trust that it is hilarious, and maybe I'll tell it later :-)

-Sara

Horrible Wall Shrimp

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? I guess I've just been sleeping too well at night and not had time to post (yeah right). Emily is doing pretty well though, she usually goes to sleep at 9:30-10:30PM, wakes up to eat between 1:30-3:30AM, and then I have to get her up when we wake up for the day at 5:30AM. My biggest complaint about the night these days are the wall shrimp! I think they're actually called house centipedes and they're mostly harmless, but I just know that if one ever got on me I would probably die.

The last two nights I have slept in the guest bedroom because Will has been sick and that way he can sleep and not be awakened by Emily grunting over the baby monitor. Also our guest bed kicks ass and I love it! Thanks to Josh and Brad!

Anyway, two nights ago I woke up and in the semi-dark I noticed a diagonal, 3" long blur on the wall. I thought to myself "Brad just painted in here a year ago, there shouldn't be large smudges on the wall, it must be a huge wall shrimp, aaaaaaaaaaaah!" Unfortunately I was right. (As a sidenote, I have the uncanny ability to detect horrible insects with just the slightest of clues...I once discovered a 3" cockroach hiding in our blinds just because I saw what looked like cockroach legs on top of the blinds. Will laughed at me, but he wasn't laughing as he ran to get a rusty knife to get rid of the huge cockroach he found there!)

So I steeled my nerve and smashed the bug, terrified that it would fall into my bed unharmed and exact revenge on me later. It did fall perilously close to the bed, but I smashed it again, and then a third time when I realized with a shudder that the top inch of its body was still sticking out of the wadded up tissue and wiggling at me.

So last night, I was lying in bed, trying to convince myself that I don't see wall shrimp all that often, it was probably a fluke and I wouldn't see one for another year or more, when Emily started squalling so I left the room to go feed her and there was another one on the wall, just as big as the first! I couldn't take the stress of "what if I miss with a tissue, will it fall on my arm and cause me to have to run around screaming?" so I ran to the office to get my purple Old Navy flip flop that has been under the desk for centuries. I knew I had left it there for a reason. With a smack like a gunshot (that Will miraculously slept through) I smacked the hell out of him, but he only left a small smudge on the wall and on my sandal, and none of the usual mess of legs that are usually left behind. I convinced myself that it was enough of a smudge that there had to be something vital in there and he was surely dead, although I hadn't confirmed it with a body. Later though, I found his body lying on the floor half-smashed, and my wonderful husband picked it up and threw it away for me, even though our unspoken wedding vows only included the dispatch of spiders and not specifically wall shrimp <3

I can only conclude that the wall shrimp in my house have decided to grow to monstrous proportions so that they can kill me and carry away my baby. I might have to get Matt over here, because as legend has it, he once lived in a house where all of a sudden millions of wall shrimp came pouring out of a hole in the wall above his bed, and he matter-of-factly covered it with duct tape and went on living his life as normal. I would have moved out in a heartbeat and probably needed to spend some time recovering in a padded cell.

So lets hope that tonight the wall shrimp will stay in their nests and not come out to creep the hell out of me. Or better yet they'll take the murder of two of their oldest and hugest community members as the warning it was intended to be and MOVE THE FECK OUT OF MY HOUSE!

-Sara

New Bathroom

Some of you may be wondeirng, if she never remembered to post on her blog before, where is she getting so much time to do so now that she has an infant at home? Well rest assured, I am not neglecting my daughter in favor of posting on myspace. We got SO lucky with Emily, she will let out a little squall just about every 3 hours to let us know she's hungry at night, I'll nurse her, and then she'll go right back to sleep. That is, if I get her totally full, and sometimes she'll fall asleep before that happens. There's nothing more depressing than crawling back into your nice warm bed after an hour-long midnight feeding and immediately hearing a cry over the baby monitor, so I have taken to spending 10 minutes or so in the office to make sure she isn't about to wake back up and want food before I return to bed. Works out well for all of us :-)

So Emily is doing very well and we are enjoying her immensely. She likes to cluster feed in the evenings, so I basically have a baby attached to me from 6:30 until bedtime, but other than that she is such a good girl.

So now to the new bathroom part. We are having a handyman-type guy come over and fix some things around the house soon, like our master bedroom door which doesn't lock or even latch. We have the doggies trained not to barge in uninvited, but a door that doesn't even close will not be a good thing with a little Emily running around. Another thing he's fixing is a broken towel bar in the upstairs bathroom, which I actually broke accidentally while Will and I were messing around back when we were teenagers and the Randalls still lived here! It's about time.

Anyway, after this guy fixes the towel bar, he wants to re-paint the bathroom so I said fine. Now, though, I'm thinking it would be nice to re-decorate the bathroom too, since it is going to be a kid/guest bathroom, and as of now we just have a mish mash of old bathroom accessories from college in there. Since you automatically get a bunch of rubber duckies when you have a baby (try it, you'll see) we decided to do a rubber ducky theme and I found this really awesome pattern at Target that is cute but not too kid-ish. I'm not sure how kosher it is to post copyrighted pictures on here, so I'll just say if you're interested in seeing it, search "ducks shower curtain" or "ducks bath coordinates" on the target website. I am now anxiously awaiting the arrival of my goodies so I can make the bathroom awesome. I may not be able to go out and run errands at this point, but I am a first-class online shopper, and I can even do it with a baby latched on, so before we know it I'll have redecorated the whole house!

Not really, the bathroom's good for now. But I DO have to see about curtains in the dining room....

-Sara

An Evening Fit for a Sitcom

I have to relay the events of last night, it is just too crazy of a story not to tell.

Yesterday started and ended perfectly, it was just the middle part that got challenging. We got up, went for our walk, bummed around enjoying a morning at home without having to go to the pediatrician (Emily was doing great at her last appointment so we don't have to go back until next Tuesday, yay!) and the backyard looked so idyllic with the starflowers sprinkled everywhere (I don't care if it's a weed, they're pretty) we decided to take Emily on her first picnic. The picnic was wonderful, with the notable exception of the dogs. I suppose you can't expect dogs to be pleasant and well-behaved picnic companions, but with the eating and coughing back up of grass, the rolling in and shaking off of dirt and the crashing around they made it hilarious, if not relaxing.

We had a lovely afternoon visit from Carolyn who works with Will, and then the time came for Will to go to the gym. As is our custom, my mom and sisters came over to hang out while he was gone. We watched Will's and my wedding video and were having a grand old time when I got up and went into the kitchen. I noticed immediately that something was wrong, namely there was a half inch of warm soapy water gushing across the floor. I sprinted into the laundry room and found the washer overflowing and cascading water down onto the floor. I turned it off and yelled for help. Emily had to be unceremoniously dumped into her bassinette, and for the first time in her life she didn't cooperate and decided to start fussing. She had spent the last 3 hours being a perfect angel sleeping as she was passed around to the guests, periodically opening her eyes to charm everyone, so I can't blame her.

Krista changed her diaper while I assessed the basement, which now boasted several waterfalls. As I was moving things out of the way, I noticed I was standing barefoot in water that was coursing down over the air conditioning unit, so I beat a hasty retreat upstairs to turn off the AC before I shocked the living crap out of myself. Emily was still fussing, so I latched her on and was trying to push towels around on the floor with my feet while she nursed. All was going well until I had to burp her. I flipped her over into my favorite web-of-the-hand-holding-the-jaw burping position and started patting while I continued to sop up water. Emily was making pretty typical grunting noises, and it wasn't until Krista said "Sara, her face looks really red, I think you're choking her" that I realized her chin had slipped up and I actually just had her leaning into my hand by her neck! I sat her back up and she was 100% fine, except for her bright red face. I then started to cry of course, because my poor little baby had been grunting and trying to tell me she was choking but I hadn't paid attention and I'd been on my way to accidentally strangling her :-(

My mom and sisters assured me they had it covered and insisted that I sit down and nurse her in the living room. I sat nursing her and crying for awhile, it turned out she was in the mood for one of her 50-minute marathon feedings so it pretty effectively kept me from being able to help clean up my house. At the end of the feeding, she unleashed a mighty torrent of barf that soaked her onesie and brought up what I'm pretty sure was everything I had just spent 50 minutes getting into her! I went upstairs to change her onesie, and discovered that just to make sure she was helping as MUCH as possible, she had generated a poopy diaper as well!

By this point everything was cleaned up, and when I came downstairs with a clean and dry (if no longer entirely full) Emily, Will was home with our sushi (which was paid for by Bruce our sushi chef in honor of the new baby, how sweet!) and the evening got calm again. I fed Emily some more, then laid back on the couch with her on my chest and we both zonked out.

I am SOOOOOOOOO glad my mom and sisters were here, I have absolutely no idea what I would have done otherwise. As it is, I now have to call a washer repairman today and BEG him to come out ASAP. After all, I have a baby here and everyone knows that babies are the single most efficient laundry-generating system ever created by man. Let's hope he takes pity on me.

Looking back I can laugh, and I just got to stand over her crib and watch my incredible little baby laugh in her sleep (plus she just slept for a solid 3-hour chunk of time) so I am back to being my usual deliriously happy self now :-)

-Sara

I'm a mommy!

Well, it has been FAR too long without an update, but this'll be a good one, besides I've been busy making and squeezing out a baby :-) Will and I are parents!!!!! On Monday, May 7th we welcomed our beautiful 7 pound 10 oz baby girl Emily. Parenthood has been amazing so far, she's such a sweet and agreeable girl, we actually have to set an alarm at night so that we can go wake her up to feed her, and she doesn't do much crying at all.

The only not-so-good thing is that Emily is a little jaundice, which is not a big deal except that she is coombs positive, which means my O blood and her A blood don't get along. I had heard of Rh sensitivity before, but I had no clue this incompatibility even existed! Anyway, it means that she is more at risk for going from what she is now (which is a fairly normal level of jaundice for most babies) to dangerously jaundice. What all this means is that we have had to go to the pediatrician's office every day for the last 4 days which is a drag but I have to keep reminding myself that there's really nothing wrong, it's all preventative, and things could be a LOT worse. Todays appointment went so well though that tomorrow will be our first day without having to drive to Frederick with her, hooray! At least she's getting used to car rides and we're getting used to how long it takes to leave the house with a baby :-)

I will post some pictures here when I get a chance, but for now I have pictures up at www.photos.yahoo.com/photos/saradray

So anyway, we're home and settling in. Hope everyone else is doing well too and I'll try to update again before another 4 months passes by!

-Sara

Been awhile...

Been awhile
Current mood: productive

...But if anyone still checks, I'll post again.

I am now 23 weeks pregnant, and as far as we (and the ultrasound technician) can tell, it's a girl! She will be an Emily Elizabeth. As we speak she's bonking around like crazy in my tummy and making it move into weird shapes. Pretty soon I'll have to change my myspace profile to say "proud parent"!

And our friends Lyle and Wendy are the newest proud parents we know! We got to drop by and visit the new family a couple weeks ago, and they have the most adorable, perfect little baby girl. I can't wait for her to meet her new best friend Emily!

I'm starting to wind down for the evening though, so I'll make this short. Will is in Salt Lake City until tomorrow (boo) so I have been using my alone time to do some things around the house. I finally got all the Xmas stuff put away, at least I got it put away before the 1 month past mark! Getting rid of the tree without Will here posed a problem though. Not to mention the fact that it was dry and crispy and dropping needles everywhere and I didn't want to drag it through the living room where I had just vacuumed. My solution? Cram it out the window. You'd be surprised how well that worked, and tomorrow I can just drag it to the junk pile in the backyard. I just hope the doggies don't pee all over it first.

Once the painter guy comes in 2 weeks and does the nursery (and our downstairs, hooray!) I can start setting things up for little Emily. I am starting to panic because my belly is poking out more and more and we don't have ANYTHING ready yet! I suppose we still have a couple of months but we're gone most of Feb. and I'm worried I will end up getting too fat and tired to do much of anything near the end.

But anyway, I am heading to bed now. I need to be well-rested so I can go meet my sweetie at the airport tomorrow!!

-Sara

Things are going well

Things are going well
Current mood: bouncy

Hello all! Everyone's happy in Sara and Will land. I was never SUPER tired, but I am slowly slowly getting my energy back. I don't think I've taken a nap in several weeks! As long as you don't count falling asleep on the couch at 9 most nights as a nap. I'm still jogging 4x a week, which I'm happy about. I was thinking of cutting back a bit, but then I read a message board where most of the women were running 40 miles a week at 34 weeks pregnant, so I felt like a total wuss and decided to keep it up. My belly started showing a bit at 12.5 weeks, and now at 17 weeks it hasn't gotten any bigger. I'm thinking I'll just pop again soon and start REALLY looking pregnant. And only 3 more weeks until the ultrasound, we're FINALLY getting close! Also, the most exciting thing is that I've been feeling little taps here and there so hopefully soon I'll be feeling the honest-to-goodness kicks and movements :-)

Work is actually going pretty well too, aside from my boss periodically breaking down in tears. She's upset because an analyst who has worked there for 18 years is moving to South Korea. It'll get more hectic after she leaves (she only has 2 more days of work, yikes!) but that's ok because things have been pretty boring this year anyway, so a little more excitement is a good thing. Also I've learned how to run a neat new machine called an ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) that measures levels of metals. A good new skill to put on my resume at the very least.

It's been a good holiday season so far too. We got our first snow last night! And we almost have all of our presents taken care of and I haven't set foot in a store yet. The bad thing about the technology age is that the hard part is coming up with the idea, and sometimes I forget that once I've gotten that over with I still have to order the present to be finished! We have a fairly relaxing weekend coming up though. Last weekend we had a Merril Lynch cocktail party, Lyle and Wendy's baby shower, a visit from Michelle, and the FNP employee awards dinner, phew! This weekend all that is planned is going to see Apocalypto tonight and Will's Rotary Club fireside chat at Thorpewood on Sunday, whatever that is. Thorpewood looks like a neat place up in the Catoctin mountains, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. Should be pretty all decorated for Christmas.

Anyway, I guess there's not much to report, but that's a good thing! I hope everyone is having very happy holidays!

-Sara

Grrr....my doctor is mean

We just had our second doctor's appointment today, and the good news is everything is fine, the bad news is that we still didn't get to see the baby, and we won't until DECEMBER 29TH!!!! I thought at the VERY latest we'd get an ultrasound at the next appointment, but it turns out they'll give us a SLIP to get an ultrasound, and I'm supposed to wait until I'm 20 weeks along to get it. That evil place doesn't want me to bond with my baby :-(

I'm just really worried, plus I still don't really FEEL pregnant, so I'll feel so much better once we've seen the baby and made sure it doesn't have any horrible deformities (like the girl on TLC's "Building a new Face", she gave me nightmares!)

The good news is the heartbeat was strong, and the baby is hanging out "high up" instead of laying on my bladder, so the midwife says our baby is cooperative. Let's hope it stays that way!

So then I went and got a massage, plus a manicure and pedicure to celebrate being in the second trimester, and did some errands. It was lovely.

So tonight we will be driving to Bethesda to visit with our friend Dan and then say hi to Matt and Dhanya (and wish Matt a happy birthday!) After that I get to drive home...let's hope I can stay awake!

-Sara

We're going to be parents!

Well, we have been waiting to make it public, but I think everyone pretty much knows by now, Will and I are going to be having a baby next May!! :-) The official due date is May 18th, we'll see how close we get to that. Needless to say we are ridiculously excited, and we can't wait! In the closer future, I am looking forward to having a belly (instead of just looking pudgy), feeling the baby move, finding out the sex etc. Come Christmas, I'm hoping we'll have gotten to all 3.

I am 12 weeks along as of now, and I have been very lucky to have had a pretty easy pregnancy so far. I am tired as hell right now, despite falling asleep at 9 on the couch last night and taking a nap this morning, but that is probably because of the crazy dreams that kept waking me up last night. I've heard vivid dreams are a side effect of pregnancy, let's hope they're not all as crazy as last night! But this being week 12, I'm hoping I follow the typical timeline and get my energy back in the next week or two. At the very least now that I'm in the second trimester I can get maternal massages to help with my generalized aching :-)

So that's pretty much what we've been up to recently, and that's why I haven't really been posting much since Hawaii (which is where this situation began) because I've become a typical pregnant woman with babies on the brain, so if I didn't want to mention babies there wasn't much else to talk about in a blog.

Anyway, Will and I will be going to dinner at my parents' house tonight, my second cousin from Arizona (who is now working in DC) is coming up for dinner, and she's exactly my age so it'll be neat to see her again. Sunday my friend Michelle is coming up from Virginia to visit, and I'm looking forward to that. I think we'll check out the new Carroll Creek Promenade downtown and get some lunch etc. This is the weekend for visiting with people I haven't seen in awhile!

I'll post more later, hopefully now that our secret is out I will be updating more often.

-Sara

I guess it is time I updated! It feels like I've been busy recently, but when I try to think of what I have been doing, it doesn't seem like much. I went to a concert (Roger Waters--awesome!), then the following weekend I waited in a hotel lobby while everyone else went to a concert (TOOL--no thanks!). Last weekend we went to In The Streets in Frederick, then on Sunday we went to the Renaissance festival, which we had to wait in 2 HOURS of traffic to get to! I couldn't believe it, traffic was backed up for miles on the highway. The plus side to all of that is that we got to see a man in full renaissance regalia jump from his car and run into the woods to pee, which was highly amusing.

Other than that, we've been doing a lot of family stuff, and in a couple of hours we're headed to the Dulles Hilton so we can wake up horrendously early tomorrow and fly to Chicago. We're going for the Inland Press Association Annual Family Owners Reunion, which was lots of fun last year, because it is a newspaper conference that actually has people Will's and my age instead of catering exclusively to the 50+ crowd. It should be fun, and you can't beat the price. Will's ticket, the hotel room and our food are covered by the FNP, and I used frequent flier miles for my ticket so we're paying $5 total for the trip, not bad! I'll have to do some shopping while I'm there. I'm truly not a shopaholic, but there's something about Chicago that brings it out in me. I just hope I don't freeze to death, they're forecasting snow for Friday, craziness! Maybe I'll get to experience some of that "Lake-effect snow" that the weatherpeople are always talking about.

I'll post again when I return, or from Chicago if I am bored

-Sara

Still Hangin' in Hawaii

Well, my last post was pretty depressing, so I'll try to be more positive now!

Sunday we went back to the commissary for weekly groceries, then to the farmer's market where I bought a ton of fruit that I thought I could space out over the remaining days I have here, but it has all stubbornly refused to ripen so between now and Thursday I have to eat a 2.5 pound mango, a bunch of ladyfinger bananas, a large papaya, an asian pear, an apple, and 3 rambutans (which are like lychees but covered in soft red spines). I am thinking a Thursday afternoon desperation smoothie may be in order. Anyway, later on Sunday Caitlin and I hiked up a mountain out by Dillingham airfield, and it was really pretty and good exercise. There were great views along the way, lots of friendly pot-smoking mountain bikers along the trail, and it was a good workout. Afterward we got shave ice and a coconut, and I couldn't help myself, I bought two guavas. I am going to end up in a fruit coma.

Yesterday Caitlin and I spent all day at the Ko 'Olina spa. It was very nice...we first jogged along the beach, then used the weight room, then hung out at the spa for awhile. I personally am not a fan of saunas or steamrooms, I find it difficult to breathe in them, but the other facilities were nice and I enjoyed my super-facial (I'd never had a facial before that included a back massage and arm/hand foot/leg treatments, but I wasn't complaining) although I got a couple of zits that evening...hmmmm.

Today was my first day all on my own, as Caitlin is starting her job at Maui Divers. I had my helicopter ride today which was one of THE coolest things ever. A plane is such a utilitarian way to fly. Always in a straight line, getting to your destination as quickly as possible. Flying in a helicopter is like you fly in your dreams (if you've ever had a dream that you could fly). You can hover, pause to look at things, skim the ground, it was just so neat. When we flew over the area where they filmed the helicopter scene (and others) in Jurrasic park, they played the music from the movie over the headsets we had to wear and it was very surreal. After my flight I made a stop at Lush to pick up my sister's order (whenever I go somewhere she scurries to the computer to figure out if I'll be near a Lush store) and then went home. I was lucky I did, because I narrowly escaped being caught in one of the worst traffic jams in Oahu history, if not THE worst. Some army guy was towing a crane behind him on H1 and it was too tall to fit under the overpass so he smashed into it. It compromised the structural integrity of the bridge, so they had to shut down H1 for the rest of the day. If you've never been here before, H1 is the freeway, the biggest road on the island, and one of the only ways to get from Honolulu to the west. Poor Caitlin on her first day of work had to drive all the way up and over the top of the island on a 1-lane highway to get home, along with everyone else who was in Honolulu at the time, and she didn't get home until 9:30! I saw the crane and was in the slow traffic going by but thank goodness they hadn't closed the road yet.

I think I'll avoid Honolulu tomorrow....

So lonely...

So lonely...
Current mood: depressed

I said goodbye to Will today until next Friday...what was I thinking planning our trip this way? I figured Will is going to be away for his management retreat thing for work next week anyway so I might as well stay in Hawaii, but because of logistics it ended up that I will be spending 6 nights away from him instead of the 3 that it would have been. Argh! I miss him so much already. This is the second longest amount of time we've ever been apart, and I know people in long distance relationships are probably rolling their eyes right now (especially since I'm in Hawaii) but I dont' care, I'm feeling depressed without my husband so :-P

This morning we tried to go to Hanauma Bay in the morning, but by the time we got there, waited through the admission line, and found out we still had to watch an 8-minute video on how not to touch coral while snorkelling we would only have had about 20 minutes at the beach. We told the people we were Maeve and Court and that we had already seen the video, but they didn't buy it so we just got a refund and went to hike Diamondhead, the big extinct volcano that dominates Waikiki beach. It was hot and dry as promised, and it is getting irritating to have to pay a fortune for parking everywhere we go, THEN have to pay admission, fees, taxes, etc. I was warned that Oahu was expensive, and boy is it true! I still think we're doing pretty well though considering we are staying with friends and I returned our fun yellow jeep today. Maeve is letting me use her car for the rest of the trip.

Then I had to drive my husband to the airport and say goodbye :*( After that I didn't really feel like doing much, and Caitlin wasn't feeling well either, so we've just kind of laid around the whole evening chatting. It is kind of nice though, since we've been going constantly for a week now.

I'm not looking forward to sleeping alone tonight :-(

-Sara

Happy Birthday will ( days ago)!

My sweetie is now officially 26! I am once again married to an older man :-) For Will's birthday I booked a sea kayak for the morning and we went out to a couple of islands off the coast of Kailua beach. It was hard work rowing, and it was honestly pretty miserable on the way out to the little island that was our goal. The wind was going against us which meant we were hitting waves straight on and it was a heck of a struggle, plus it was raining a bit and turtles kept surfacing right next to our little kayak and freaking me out. I was afraid I'd smack them accidentally with an oar! The island was cool though, with little tidepools to explore and impressive waves crashing all over the rocks. On the way back the wind was with us and the sun was out so it was nicer, but we were so tired! After that we went and checked into the Marriott on Waikiki beach, then went on a sunset cocktail cruise on a catamaran which was a blast. I was worried the waves would make Will or I seasick (the waves got kinda big once we went out past Diamondhead) but it was just fun, and we even "surfed" in the catamaran. Once we got back we staggered up the beach to the Marriott where we had an awesome sushi dinner. It was really good, but I had broken my flip flop on the way up from the catamaran so I had to shuffle into the restaurant in bare feet. The next morning we jogged on the beach and did a little bit of shopping, then headed back here to Maeve's. Everything turned out as I had planned, which was really nice, although a couple of times I thought we were late so I was rushing us along, but apparently there is island time here too (although admittedly people are only about 10 minutes late here instead of 30 min-1 hour in the Caribbean). We did a luau last night which was ok, but not great. Having alcoholic beverages available would have made it a bit more fun, but we found out the Polynesian Cultural Center is owned by the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints, so that explains there not being any drinks. It was really cool to watch 20 gilrs line up and hula though...

Today we were back in Waikiki to go on a little 1-hour submarine tour. I was hoping we would see sharks and octopi and such but it seems like Hawaii only has black and white and yellow fish. There aren't nearly the different colors of fish you see in the caribbean, and the coral is nonexistant. There are lots of big sea turtles though, so that is cool.

I have to run now, we're going to the Ko 'Olina sushi buffet tonight, so I'm going to go get ready. I hear the east coast is getting battered with Ernesto right now, and that they have 12 foot waves at Ocean City. Funny, because that is bigger than they have here right now! I hope the storms don't delay Will's flight home or anything, although he should have a nice flight since he is flying first class, lucky boy :-)

-Sara