Enjoying the Journey

I have spent many years trying to convince myself that I truly enjoy wearing uncomfortable high-heels, and spending hours on my hair, and having 8+ handbags to go with any outfit. I really wanted to believe that if we were well off, that Mark and I would be the kind of people that went on ritzy vacations and ate at nice restaurants. But I have discovered that this is just the person I try to be. I try to be the woman that looks put together and stylish, that has an exciting and cultured life to those who don’t know me. But if you really knew me you’d know, that I am really just a girl who loves to lounge around on a Friday night with the man she loves, wearing my oldest pair of sweatpants with holes in the pockets and eating cheap take-out. Try as I may to convince myself that we would be happier if we had more money, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I am perfectly happy with $5 pizza and my cozy apartment.

Of course it’s nice to go out once and awhile, especially for special occasions. But in a recent conversation with a family member we discussed what we were willing to pay for a truly great meal. We’re talking 5-star cuisine, fancy restaurant, several courses, etc. This relative is particularly fond of fine dining and said that he would be more than willing to pay $200 for just himself if the food was REALLY spectacular. I was aghast. I would never even consider spending that much money on food! Maybe I don’t have much experience with fine dining, but no food is worth that much to me, I would rather spend the money on a great pair of boots, or a piece of furniture for our home, at least that’s something that will last. Food just gets eaten, then it’s gone and all you have is the memory of a great meal.

So in testing this theory, Mark and I had the opportunity this weekend to go out for a very nice and expensive meal to a restaurant of our choice, without opening our wallet. Mark thought we should go someplace we had been before and liked, but I insisted that we go someplace new and fancy since we would never do it if we were paying. I chose Spago, which is a pretty famous restaurant founded by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. I was excited about the prospect of what I was sure would be a spectacular feast for my tastebuds. Once again, I don’t have really any experience with high quality cusine. I would have to say that thus-far in my life, the best food I’ve ever had was on a cruise (yummy). So I got to dress up, and Mark even put on a nice shirt and shoes instead of his usual flip-flops and t-shirt. The menu was one of those that had like 5 items in each section to choose from, and I didn’t understand half of the words. Mark and I each got an appetizer, main course and dessert. It sounds like a lot of food, but it came in the “fancy restaurant” portions, so it wasn’t too much.

So….Overall verdict:

Was the food good? Yeah, especially the dessert. Was it worth the $130 check (including gratuity)? Absolutely not! Maybe I just don’t appreciate fine food, complex flavors, blah blah blah. For my $65 portion of the check I got a ceasar-type salad, one piece of eggplant bruchetta, pan-seared chicken with mushrooms, and a small dish of creme brulee. It wasn’t as good as I expected. I almost wished we had gone someplace like the Fish Market and I could have gotten the $46 lobster, that would have been better I think. Mark felt the same way. So although we enjoyed the food, I’m glad we got to try fine dining without having to pay for it. Because I would have been so sad that we spent all that money on food. I would rather have a new pair of shoes.

I guess I’m just more of a PJ’s and Ramen kind of girl.

It finally happened! The checker at Cost-Co today asked if I needed help out to my car, and when I declined, she insisted- because “I shouldn’t be lifting heavy things being pregnant and all”. I’m glad I actually AM pregnant, otherwise that would have been very offensive. Yay, I look pregnant and not just fat!

It’s time for my pregnancy gripe list. Please don’t read on unless you don’t mind listening to a cranky woman complain!

Ahhh, the joys of pregnancy. As much as I was warned of all the lovely side-effects that growing a little person can induce, I was too one-track-minded to care. Of course I should feel lucky to be pregnant, and so many women have it so much worse than me, blah, blah, blah. Let me give you the truth, it’s not all fun! So allow me to break it down into a list of my top 10 things I hate about being pregnant.

1. I’m cranky. I’m cranky pretty much every day, all day.

2. I wake up 3-4 times a night with low-back-pain. I thought this wouldn’t start unill I actually had a large belly to cause the back-pain, but apparently not.

3. I don’t look pregnant yet, I just look fat. People don’t look at me and think “oh, look at her cute pregnant belly”, they think “wow, that girl needs to do some crunches”.

4. Gross but true- the combination of recent dietary changes to a more vegan diet + pregnancy = lots of gas. That’s all I’m going to say.

5. I spend most waking hours obsessively thinking about things I need to accomplish before the baby comes. Everything from buying furniture to dusting the bookshelves. It’s like my mind won’t take a break! AHHHHHHH!

6. I’m a neat freak. Even leaving the house without making the bed bugs me, and I think about it until I get home and do it. I think it drives Mark crazy because I follow him around picking up after him. If he leaves a cup in the sink, I’m right behind him loading it in the dishwasher, etc.

7. I seem to catch every cold, flu, cough and sore throat that happens to be going around. And since I babysit, and I’m around kids every day, I catch everything! I’m sick all the time!

8. I am tired, always. It feels like having Mono.

9. I’m hungry 95% of the time. I wake up starving. I go to bed hungry. And yet, eating doen’t seem to fill that void. I eat, and I’m still hungry, so I eat some more, still hungry. Maybe this is why some women gain tons of weight during pregnancy?

10. And last but not least…Yesterday I realized that I no longer fit into my regular jeans. I know it’s stupid. I didn’t expect to fit into them all the way through. But I sat there and cried when I couldn’t button them. There is that fear I have, that I will never fit into them again. That my young, thin, attractive self may be gone forever with the loss of those jeans. Now I’m just going to be a fat, old, mom.

Thus concludes my pregnancy gripe list. Please keep in mind that I’m not entirely chemically balanced right now. I’m sure I will look back on pregnancy and say it was all worth it when Peanette arrives, but that’s hard to picture right now.

Last night as I was falling asleep I felt Peanette kick for the first time! I was starting to get worried because I’m 22 weeks along and hadn’t felt anything yet. It is surprising how much something as small as that can make me feel so much more in love with this baby I’ve never met. For the first few months I didn’t feel that attachment to my unborn baby that I’ve heard other women describe. I felt guilty that I didn’t. But with every week and every milestone in this pregnancy I grow so much more attached to my baby girl, and I can’t wait for her to be in my arms. Feeling her kick last night was an experience I will never forget, because it was the first time I felt like a mommy.

Mark says it’s a sign she’ll be a great soccer player, I say it’s a sign she’ll be a great dancer:)

I don’t think I should be allowed in Carter’s anymore…

I don’t think I can be held accountable for my actions due to hormone spikes and overwhelming emotions at the thought of my own baby daughter wearing such cute clothes. You would have done the same!

Mark is going to kill me.

So this is kind of a recap, since I really never wrote much about our Christmas. I thought I would just post some pics and let them do most of the talking…

Lunch with my high school girlfriends. One of my “musts” on any trip to Utah.

My very adorable niece, who pretty much spent as much time as possible in my arms for the 4 days we visited:)

Mark spent most of the trip buried in this Sudoku book.

On Christmas morning I read Mark a poem I wrote about my struggles to find him a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, luckily
I was successful on my 6th attempt after camping out all night long at Best Buy just one week before Christmas!

Aubree and Bryce admiring the beautiful wedding album I made them.

We had a very cute elf arrive on Christmas eve, but it turned out to be a Shelley in disguise!

Kellee and I fought over who got to hold Rhianna whenever she was around.

Marni with the awesome mini digital camera we got her.

Rhianna wrapped in the quilt I made her. Yup, this is the first quilt I’ve ever made by myself, yay!

And that’s pretty much all the photos I took. I really need to get better about getting out my camera and snapping away all the time when I’m on trips like this. Otherwise I am kicking myself after for not capturing everything we did. But it was a great Christmas and I feel so lucky to have been able to spend it not only with my family, but with Mark’s as well. We are so blessed to have such awesome families and to get to spend the holidays with so many people we love. We hope your holidays were as happy as ours.

Well, I was waiting for my wonderful hubby to scan in our ultrasound pics so I could include them with this entry, but since he’s being slow on that end I guess I’ll just add them later.

We had our 20 week ultrasound 2 days after Christmas, and I am excited to announce that peanut is actually “Peanette”. That’s right, we’re having a girl! Heaven help us, my mother’s curse is going to come true and I’m having a daughter who will probably be just like me! I’m so happy just the same. I’m sure I would have been happy either way, but I REALLY wanted a girl. Yeah!

So I thought that once I knew what I was having I would be so excited to buy gender-appropriate baby clothes, and start shopping for things for the nursery. I went shopping the day after we found out she’s a girl, and I didn’t feel like buying anything! I didn’t like the colors and fabrics of the bedding sets, and the clothes were not as cute as I remember them being before it was my baby I was imagining wearing them. I don’t know why I’m not more excited! It was always so fun to buy baby stuff for other people, I thought it would be 10x as fun to buy them for my own baby. What’s wrong with me?

On another note, Mark and I just booked a cruise to Mexico for March. Yes, I will be a huge fat pregnant woman on a ship full of toned bods in bikinis. Joy. At least there will be food. Lots of really good food that is already included in the price of the cruise and therefore is all-you-can-eat. I know some of you may be thinking, “Why on earth would you take a cruise when you are 7 months pregnant?” I guess we just saw it as our last opportunity to take a vacation like this in awhile. Plus I need something to look forward to and plan for other than the birth of this baby or I may go nuts.

Christmas was good. We took a whirlwind 4 day trip to Utah to see my family. I feel like we spent the whole time eating, or maybe it was just me:) I got some of the best Christmas gifts ever, including a vita-mix from Mark’s parents which has provided us with fruit smoothies that we have been living off of since we came home. I got to spend a bunch of time holding my sweet adorable new niece, which renewed my waining desire to have a baby. I also got to have lunch with my high school gal-pals and catch up, which is so rare since we all live in different places. It was a great Christmas, and it was over before I knew it.

Since returning home I have entered a major nesting phase. I didn’t have to babysit last week because most of my families were still out of town for the holidays. So I spent the week trying to organize, and de-clutter the apartment. I also did a bit of deep-cleaning, and a ton of throwing away. It’s amazing how long I’ve held onto wedding gifts that I knew we would never need or want, but I kept “just in case”. Forget that! It’s been 3 years, it’s time to say goodbye! And why do we have such an abundance of empty boxes? We no longer have the luxury of keeping every box that a new appliance comes in, just in case we move again. They are gone! And while I can’t say I made a major progress in making room for peanette, or that the difference would be noticible to anyone but me, I feel a ton better. But I still have a mental list of all the things that need to be done in the next 4 months. And the answer is yes, it will drive me crazy until I accomplish them.