a little "lately" update

so lately...

1. we are doing a 30 days without sugar challenge. mostly just matt and i, though olive is going to have to tighten up as well. that girl loves her ice cream as much as her mama and that probably isn't the best thing.

2. we have all been so sick. the summer cold from h-e-double-hockeysticks has hit the 4 us with no mercy. i've had a particularly hard time and can't seem to kick the fever.

3. speaking of which, i'm pretty sure i have been infected with lyme again. i got a horrible insect bite a month ago that came with such a bad rash that i had to be put on a steroid to decrease the swelling. i thought it must have been a spider bite but now i'm thinking it may have been a tick bite. i have been having a host of old symptoms that i thought i had beat once and for all. so frustrating. i have a dr. appointment thursday about it.

4. we have been working on getting our house ready to be put on the market. we are so excited to be inching closer and closer to our goal of getting out of our too-small-house!

5. matt and i are addicted to watching "the biggest loser" on netflix. i don't know why i just admitted that. but those contestants are pretty darn inspiring!

6. we are counting down the days until we head down to hilton head in september for a family beach vacation! can't come soon enough!

rainy day

it's been such a dark, rainy day today. days like this, all i want to do is stay in bed and nap and read and watch silly shows on netflix. (ha, i wish!)

no, instead i was woken quite early and quite unpleasantly by a very bad smell. my daughter had woken up with a very upset stomach and her bedding and pajamas were in the kind of state that had me starting the day out gagging. an early morning bath for olive and a load of laundry later, we finally made it down to eat some breakfast. not that either of us had much of an appetite by that point to eat much.

it was a surprisingly productive rainy day. i decided to wash my bed sheets as well, and cleaned and vacuumed all morning. it feels good to have everything smelling and looking nice. maybe "nesting" is setting in already?

i even let olive play with play doh all morning (under closer scrutiny and supervision,) and organized some preschool curriculem i've been meaning to sort out and look at for months. hopefully we'll have the motivation and energy to start on some late this spring after the excitement of baby silas coming wears off a bit.

i've been trying to spend olive's nap time off my feet, either napping or doing something quiet because it helps so much in the evenings with the heavy braxton hicks contractions and swelling in my hands and feet if i have those couple of hours of rest. but today i really wanted chocolate chip cookies, so i spent my afternoon doing that. i'll try to convince myself they were worth it when i can't sleep tonight (and when my midwife disapprovingly informs me i've gained 10 lbs since my last visit.)

i've obviously felt very uninspired lately. i miss working on blogging, taking pictures, and being creative, but i have no energy or motivation to do any of it. thank God for my iPhone, which makes taking pictures and keeping in touch with friends and family so darned easy, or i'd have nothing to remember this pregnancy or the events of the last 7 months by. i'm hoping and praying that after silas gets settled in, i'll find my old self again.

until then, we're still here, getting rather impatient for a special little boy to arrive and shake things up. xox

thoughts

we're well into february - hard to believe! can't believe baby boy will be here possibly next month! 


some friends from church threw me and the boy a sweet little shower. it was a lovely evening of fellowship, homemade gluten free treats, and some sweet presents. (it's still so strange receiving boy items. i guess we'll get used to it soon!)


i know it's not a common occurence, but i've been enjoying my third trimester so much more than the first and second combined. i've felt relaxed, i've been enjoying feeling the baby move, and i am even quite fond of my giant belly. i feel lucky that i've gained very little weight this pregnancy (all credit must go to the long period of horrible morning sickness and the stress of having matt in the hospital in december. i eat way more sugar these days than is good for me,) and i can tell that it's made a difference in how i feel this third trimester in comparison to my third trimester with olive, where every step and movement seemed to hurt. i'm grateful to still be fairly active, flexible, and comfortable. i have even been sleeping pretty well, and as long as i'm careful not to eat anything too late in the evening, have had very little heartburn. God is good.


that being said, i am really looking forward to getting the delivery and readjusting to a newborn over with. i'm anxious to get re-settled so i can get our lives organized and orderly again and get back to doing the things i love to do, (blogging, photography, day trips, projects with olive, etc.) things have been just too distracting lately to do much with olive out of the house, and i'm not counting on them getting any less distracting until this baby gets here.


speaking of olive, she's been giving us some worry lately. last monday she woke up covered in hives, and they're still plaguing her a full week later. she's been to three different doctors, and is taking way too much medicine for my comfort, but i'm at my wits end to keep the hives at bay. she's been so miserable. i don't think i hate anything quite so much as seeing my family sick. it makes me feel very helpless. it was bad seeing matt go through surgery and recovery in december, but funny enough, it's 10 times WORSE seeing olive go through these hives, which aren't life threatening. she goes back to the doctor tomorrow, and i am hoping he will give us some good information as to what our course of action will be. 


i've hardly been on the computer at all the last few weeks, because i've gotten completely absorbed in Suzanne Collins' books, "The Hunger Games." it's easy, silly young adult fiction, but very addicting and i've been enjoying getting absorbed in reading again. i used to read all the time, but since olive was born i can probably count the number of books i've read on one hand. it's pretty bad.


i'm also hooked on "Downton Abbey." i had started it when it first came out a long time ago, and stopped watching halfway through the first episode. (the gay scene turned me off, and i lost interest.) since then, though, several good friends have encouraged us to pick it up again, promising the series gets much better, and i'm glad i took their recommendation. it's a really well done, very absorbing series. looking forward to watching the latest episode on PBS's website tomorrow night!

in honor of feeling human again, some recent pictures...

i've been having a really good week. tomorrow marks seven straight days vomit-free! a record! i'm hoping it lasts. it feels amazing to feel normal!

i'm still alive. just barely.

i've been feeling pretty horrible lately. i've had no desire to blog. but i want my sisters to keep blogging so i can snoop on their lives, and one of my sisters told me if i wanted her to keep blogging that i should update mine once in a while. (touche.) so here i be.

my brain feels like scrambled eggs so i'll just throw out some [very] random [but true] tidbits:

1. this 13 week old baby is a cunning little saboteur. while on one hand he takes great pleasure in making me sick to my stomach constantly, he won't give me the satisfaction of at least looking slimmer after all of my hurling. oh no. because he's managed to make me feel sick constantly and yet at the same time crave such horrible things as fried bologna sandwiches. i swear. fried bologna sandwiches with mustard are on my mind constantly. i want one before i throw up, and i want another one after i throw up. i'm sorry if this is making you as sick as it should make me, but i'm just keeping things honest here.

2. i love peppermint icebreakers icecubes gum. it is my favorite. it keeps the nausea at bay, especially when i'm in the car. and when i sent matt out to get some for me and he came back with a huge tub of trident white in spearmint instead i was convinced i was going to die. so today i went to target and bought three huge jumbo packs of my peppermint icebreakers icecubes gum. because more is more and more is better.

3. olive is lots of fun these days. she sings all day long, and sometimes into the night when she's supposed to be giving mama a break getting her beauty sleep. she loves drawing pictures, and is already drawing faces and fruit. she draws a really good apple. she knows all her letters, and what sounds they make. she can spell her name. and when we applaud her intelligence, she has started saying in a very serious voice "smart girl." which causes matt and i to just about die laughing. (she's also started pronouncing certain words in a british accent, just like her favorite characters on her favorite show, "kipper the dog." she insists on pronouncing "ok" like "oh-kaiiiiiii.")

4. today i bought my first pair of maternity jeans for the this pregnancy. of course they need to be hemmed, (grr...) which makes me wish grace were around so i could pay her to do them for me!

5. bologna is so disgusting.. why does it sound and taste so good while i'm pregnant? i'm so ashamed.

6. V-8 has become my new best friend. it tastes amazing with the tuna fish that the midwife says i shouldn't be eating. (tuna is another thing i think about all the time.)

and that's about all i can think of right now (other than bologna and tuna and peppermint gum, that is.) hope this is satisfactory, grace! ;)

a week of lovely weather

...is a good reason to spend a morning at the park...

...and to drink coffee outside.

we got a whole bunch of gorgeous roma tomatoes from our tomato plant this week.

and we read this bit of news in our local paper, which gave us a good laugh:

can't trust that day

it wasn't quite an ordinary monday.

most mondays we usually stay home, bake bread, and do laundry.

THIS monday, cousins were in town, so we went and played at a neat indoor play area!

then when we came home, a package was waiting on the porch for moi..

a blogger friend and i did a clothing swap last week, and it was fun to get "new" clothes in the mail!

and tonight's menu? a pasta dish with turkey sausage, fresh peppers and quinoa pasta.

yum.

just around town

this week, we got to do a little shopping at our favorite store ever..

and we got to go to daddy's favorite store ever [lowe's] to look at paint chips and carpet samples for our little renovation project we've got going on upstairs..

and we've spent looooots of time at various parks. 'cause this little girl has too much energy.

while i've been missing, we've been..

...playing in the sun...

...and in the house, when the sun is too hot...

...and with flashlights!

we've been picking strawberries...

...and flowers...

...and a new phone case. :)

we've been eating lots of plantains (soaking them in garlic-salted water first..)

...and we've been exploring "dick's sporting goods" while daddy shops for fishing supplies...

...and we've been watching the occasional "mr. bean" episode after olive goes to sleep.
(i have a strange infatuation with rowan atkinson.) ;)