Merry Christmas!!!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

That is the image that we created for our holiday cards. It’s our house with our little family out front!*

Oh and yesterday when I said that Matt and I weren’t exchanging gifts? I may have lied a little. We said we couldn’t spend any money on each other this year… but we didn’t promise anything about giving each other something that was already bought and paid for. So he did have one gift to unwrap this morning. I’ll give you a hint… it’s soft, black, and has been kicking around this blog for 2 years now. Big photoshoot of that coming soon! Until then

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

*I figured I’d explain how we created the image: Basically I saw a pregnant snowman somewhere online and loved the idea. From that concept Matt did the pencil sketch of our house with our "family" in front of it - including a snow dog! Dexter is def. a part of our family. Then I took the sketch into photoshop and turned it into a full-color cartoon. I also added shadows and some of the details like the hats on the snowmen, etc. I'm really happy with how it turned out... but I seriously forgot how much of a pain in the ass printing things can be. Next time we do something like this I'm paying the extra $$ to have it professionally printed!

Bah Humbug

I haven’t really been feeling this Christmas thing at all this year since:

1. We’re not doing any entertaining over the holidays.


2. However, in 3 weeks we’re having over a dozen out of town friends staying at our house for a party-like-it’s-the-4th-of-July weekend… which although is super-fun is also the deadline for getting all of the reorganizing and home improvements finished. We’re not even close.


3. We didn’t put up any decorations because of 1 & 2. Not even a Christmas tree or stockings or anything.


4. We’re not exchanging gifts because nothing we could buy each other is as important as saving for maternity leave


5. We drastically reduced what we usually buy for other people because nothing we could buy for anyone is as important as saving for maternity leave


6. I didn’t have time to make hardly any of my Christmas gifts because of the whole Get the House Ready for Our New Life Plan. And it’s just not nearly as fun or exciting to order all of your gifts from the internets.


7. This Christmas seems so lame in comparison with next Christmas – and with every other Christmas from now on. Because from now on we get to do Christmas as parents. How much fun is that?! Really blows the doors off of anything we have planned for this year.


8. Um. I’m working on growing an entire human being here. So yeah…I’ve kindof got OTHER SHIT ON MY MIND.

But this week is a week of Holiday Cheer so I've sucked up my thoughts of “Really? We have to do this Christmas thing? Why?” in favor of a more Holly Jolly approach.

Friday night a big group of us went to Prosperity Social Club to get our Scrabble on. It’s hard to be a Grinch at that place – the combo of sweet potato fries and really cute kitchy decorations could make anyone’s heart grow 10 sizes in one day.

(pic from here on flickr)

Then Saturday was Cookie Day. Every year my mom, grandma, Carolyn, and I get together and make cookies all day. This year I did remember to have my dad take a picture of us but I kindof don’t want to post it because I look …. Well…

Comically large. The apron is not a good look for the pregnant lady. Also when did my face start looking so pregnant?! But it was a super fun day. We made something like 11 different types of cookies - and they are all delicious. Cookie Day is probably my favorite tradition of the season.

Tonight is our Christmas Eve dinner with my parents - always a good time. And the whole weekend is filled with parties - both with family and friends. So yeah...I think I might finally be in the mood for this Christmas thing!

Month 6 Belly Updates

Ok so my dad gave me crap the other day for not posting belly updates. I swear it’s not because I’m becoming “comically large”! It’s because I wanted to keep up with the fruit comparisons. Those go by the month now – not by the week. But since we’re reaching the end of month 6 (holyshitthiskidisgoingtobeheresoon) I figured it’s time….

This month Gizmo is the size of an eggplant:

Which Matt was confused by because the eggplants I grow are nowhere near 2lbs.

Week 25 I missed because of the horrific glucose test migraine… but here’s week 26:

I think Dexter likes posing for these photos way more than I do!

Week 27 I spaced out and forgot… but here’s Week 28. Taken this morning:

Not too comical considering how far along I am. According to the things I’ve been reading the baby now has all of their senses fully developed. And supposedly they can taste things through the placenta… I wonder what the little dude thought when I ate that really spicy curry the other night? The big thing lately for me, though, is this bit of math: If the baby is 2.5ish pounds right now that means they need to gain about 4 more lbs before birth. Right.

Where on earth is 4 more pounds of baby going to go?!?!

Stay tuned.

Edward vs. Eric

Ok so between Christmas knitting and house improvements being a giant mess I literally have nothing going on that I can blog about right now. So how about I just bring you down a random pop culture spiral for a post or two? With vampires?

Edward:

I went to see Twilight in Columbus last weekend because my “friends” made me. I’ve read the first book …. And well… as Matt put it “I haven’t heard you make that many annoyed noises when reading since the DaVinci Code.” One of these same “friends” by the way also left the remainder of the Twilight books in my guest room last she was in town which I consider to be an act of aggression.

To sum up: We’re supposed to swoon over this guy?
I don’t get it.

Ok I get it for teenagers maybe…. But it’s also women my age who are going nuts for this whole thing. I found an entire forum called “twilight moms” for women over 25 while searching for that image. Seriously. And I really just don’t get it. He’s 17 (ok 100, but he was 17 when he was made into a vampire). I didn’t find 17-year olds that attractive when I was 17, let alone now. Also about 90% of his conversations with Bella go like this:

“I loooove you but I shouldn’t”
“No I loooove you but I shouldn’t”
“But I do loooove you. You are my heroin.”
“I’m not afraid of you because I loooove you.”
“I would never hurt you because I loooove you more”

And they’ve known each other for about five minutes at this point. Ugh. Who would want someone that whiney? And I completely don't buy the no sleeping thing. And you never see any vampire fangs in the whole movie? What's up with that? Also he doesn’t melt in the sun. Nope - he sparkles. And there’s just nothing manly about glitter:

“I’m going to be in the Ice Capades!”

At least when I’m forced to go to the sequel I won’t be pregnant anymore so I can get a solid buzz on beforehand.

Eric:
On the other end of the vampire spectrum I am so sad that True Blood is over for the season. None of the True Blood vampires would ever sparkle. Also they are all adults which is a bonus. And while Bill later on in the books *spoiler* gets just as whiney as Edward with the declarations of undying love at least Sookie is as annoyed by it as I am.

“I would DIE to protect this woman. Even though I totally lied to her for like 5 books”

Also the Southern Vampire Series takes place in Louisiana – where all good vampire stories should. Washington is for hippies. Not the undead. And the best part of the series wasn’t even really that much a part of season one of True Blood:

Dude is a Viking. A m’effing Viking. Soooo much better than a moody teenager! Plus while Eric might just kill Sookie at any moment he took a bullet for her. Twice.


Eric would kick Edward’s sparkly ass.

And that’s about all I got for right now. I have a weekend of Christmas preparations planned so hopefully next week I can blog about something more substantial than this.

Phase II – Stu-Stu-Studio!

Ok. So the way our house is laid out is that there are two bedrooms on the first floor and another, much larger bedroom and a bonus space upstairs. The second floor is up in the roof so the ceilings are slanted and overall the space is pretty cool. So when we moved in we claimed the upstairs bedroom for our own, set up one of the downstairs bedrooms as a guestroom, and one as an office.

Here’s a post from when we first bought the house that has pictures of each of those rooms.

The bonus space was always going to be my studio – it’s actually the room that sold me on our house – but we never quite got there. I mean why would I need to consolidate all of my creative stuff when I could just take over every room with it, right?

Yeah not so much anymore.

Now we’re going to use one of the downstairs bedrooms as the baby’s room and one as a combined office/guestroom. Which leaves no room for any creative stuff downstairs. So before I could even think about organizing a room for Gizmo I needed to organize a room for me.

Ready for lots of pictures?

Ta Da! It’s my very own studio! Let’s do a little tour...

The shelving is the biggest addition. And the biggest project. Nothing on those shelves used to be in this room before.

It was all downstairs along with many, many, many more books. Not anymore! We donated any duplicate architecture books we had, boxed any we haven’t looked at since graduation (bye-bye Ching!), and housed the rest here:

All of our photo albums (except for the ones filled with drunken pictures of college – those got boxed up for our kids to find and mock us for later) are consolidated on these shelves now, too.

Very handy for yarn inspiration!

Speaking of which I have some nice, white bins on order from The Container Store that fit into the bottom cubbies of the shelf. That way I have a place for all of that sock yarn in various states of preparation for sale.

Destination Yarn isn’t dead – it’s just on hold for a little while. Turns out starting a business and getting pregnant at the same time is a fail plan.

Dexter even has his own spot in my new space:

On a handwoven rug no less.

Then there’s my spinning spot:

That was there before… except for the shelf – which is a very handy place to keep my spinning tools!

The desk was there, too… but it was filled with things like thesis notes and probably hadn’t been opened since 2004. Now it’s home to my sewing supplies.

The dormer still has my bead table… but a much more streamlined bead table. Literally my storage solution used to be a pile of shopping bags. Not so much anymore:


Now that my beads are organized I have a feeling I’ll be much more apt to actually do something with them.

The other addition was this table:

I can fold it up and stash it in the dormer, or I can unfold it into a giant layout table for winding self-striping sock yarn. Very versatile.

Some of my crafting stuff did get packed up and moved into the attic... but it's easily accessible - the door in this picture leads right to it (and on the left of that door behind the book case is a half-bath in case you were interested in how our house is laid out):

The built-ins stayed the same. It’s all yarn. But I did go through and donate a whole bunch of really itchy acrylic and fun fur that I haven’t touched since 2005.

We also hung a bunch of things I’ve been wanting to hang for awhile like the loom I bought at the Museum of Traditional Textiles in Cusco:

(The door on the left leads to our bedroom, in case you were wondering)

And some pretty new Ikea curtains:

I really love my new space!

But most of all I love that even when life gets crazy with the new baby I will have a place to continue doing all of the things that I love. Plus I'm pretty sure we can fit a pack 'n play somewhere in here...

Phase II Progress

Scene: The pile of boxes and debris that used to be our house; sometime this past Sunday...

Matt: “Need anything at Home Depot?”
Jeanne: “You’re going back there again?”
Matt: “Shutup. 3 times in 48 hours is not excessive at all.”
Jeanne: “Duct tape, wood glue, and WD-40.”
Matt: “Why do you need WD-40?”
Jeanne: “So you will stop asking me if we have any WD-40.”

We’re in the throes of Phase II of our Get the House Ready for Our New Life plan and it’s getting a bit crazy. Phase I was complete a few weeks ago but it was cleaning out the attic which wasn’t all that interesting or blog worthy. Phase II, however, is much more fun and involves many more tools. Hopefully – barring any more Home Depot trips – I will have photographs to share soon! It’s very exiting… oh and nope. Phase II is not the baby’s room. That won’t get done until somewhere around Phase 8 or 9ish because something tells me that an infant probably doesn’t give a shit about matching accessories. Worst case scenario I finish all that up on maternity leave.

So in the meantime check out the Birthday Cowl I knit to go with my maternity coat:

Pretty! Malabrigo! Instant gratification project! Stash yarn!

Of course in an ideal world I’d knit a hat to go with it… I even sketched out some ideas for a fair isle pattern in these colors:

But I don’t have time for that right now. I have curtains to hem.

Musical Friday

Right so my glucose test on Monday spun me into a 2 day migraine that I’m still recovering from. It was awful. Seriously ‘effing around with the blood sugar levels of a migraine sufferer has got to be the Worst Idea Ever. But the good news is that I’m fine, baby is fine, and all continues to be healthy! My mom came to the appointment with me so she got to hear the baby’s heartbeat which was pretty cool. Only a few more months to go! I’m getting to the point where I just can’t wait to meet this kid…

Anyways in lieu of actual content (I have a half finished post about baby registries and some knitting pics that I’m too muddled to finish right now) how about some random musical numbers?

You will probably find this one hilarious if you live in or around Cleveland at this time of year:

Oh Christmas Ale


And this just cracked me up:

Prop 8 the Musical \
The jazz hands at the end destroyed me. I’m fairly certain that at least 2 of the 4 musicals I’ve been in ended with that same move.

Have a great weekend everyone! I’ll be spending mine dealing with all of this:

Our car leaving the Pittsburgh Ikea last weekend

Let the organization begin!

So… right. It’s been along time since I did a belly update. Since week 18 which was like forever ago. Anyways the baby has grown from a little week 19 mango:

This pic was taken the day of our ultrasound:

Through the terrifying week 20 cantaloupe (seriously that sounds HUGE):

And the not so scary week 21 banana (how is a banana smaller than a flipping cantaloupe?!):
And is now the size of a papaya.
They will be a papaya from week 22-24 – which I actually have real live belly pics of..

22 Weeks:

23 Weeks (at which point my uterus was officially the size of a soccer ball):

24 Weeks:

Dexter looks as thrilled to be awake as I was this morning.

So I’m at 24 weeks now…


which means that the baby is about 12 inches long measured from head to feet. For reference that would be this big:

I think everyone should have a $5 footlong this week in celebration. That or a footlong hotdog but who would ever want to eat that. Ew.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Gizmo photo shoot #2

Finally! The Ultrasound Pics! Let’s get right to it then:

Fuzzy and kindof alien looking but still adorable! We had the ultrasound a few weeks ago and the most important thing is that all is well. Baby is completely healthy – passed all of the many tests that they do with no problems. S/he was moving around so much during the ultrasound that the tech had problems getting all of the measurements they needed. It was really fun to watch! How about a profile shot:

Totally looks like a baby.

It was so easy to make out what everything was once you found the spinal column… we could see it all. Little rib cage, little legs, little hands, and little arms:

Squeee!!! Actually seeing that baby skeleton inside of me was the inspiration for my Halloween costume.

So to answer the big question – yes. That was the ultrasound that we could find out the sex at. And yes. We know. It was kindof hard not to with everything going on right in front of us. But we have decided that we would like to keep it a surprise. So no one in the world knows but me and Matt. It’s actually really fun this way. We can be prepared but we still get to have the big “It’s a ???!!!” moment after the baby is born. And we are forced to keep with gender neutral purchases. This truly is what works best for us. At first I was worried about how hard it would be but honestly it really hasn’t been. Everyone around us has been so supportive of our decision. As long as everyone is respectful and isn’t trying to catch us or isn’t poking at it constantly and being a jerk about it then it’s not that big of a deal. Because, really, everyone will know in a few months anyways. Right now all that matters is that it’s a healthy baby:

A darn cute one, too.

They’ll make liars out of you.

So one nugget of wisdom in the pile of assvice* I keep hearing during this pregnancy is that kids will make liars out of you. And that’s exactly what just happened. Right after I go and announce to the whole world of the internets that I’m “feeling like myself again” Gizmo decides to teach me the important life lesson that it is possible to have heartburn so bad that you throw up. Who knew that could even happen?! It was clear that I have been feeling much better because I had no supplies to stop the puking. No ginger ale. No Kix cereal. No string cheese. Let’s just say it was a loooong night and by yesterday morning I was so out of it that when I called in sick to work I accidentally dialed Matt’s office and the receptionist had to explain that I didn’t work there. Yeah.

*Assvice = unsolicited advice. It ranges from just annoying, to borderline insulting, to straight-up rude. Examples include things that of course we’ve taken care of/really aren’t anyone else’s business such as finances (really? It’s going to cost a lot to have a baby? Wow we didn’t think of that at all); things that are SO not helpful such as “Oh you’re in the second trimester - you should feel better by now!” (The second trimester is when the migraines started. I’m glad it was all sunshine and roses for you but it might not be that way for everyone so stop telling me how I should feel); things that noone should have an opinion on other than the 2 people who actually created this baby such as “You definitely need to pick a common/uncommon/family/non-family/traditional/unique/religious/whatever name”; or things that are just plain wrong such as “crackers will calm your stomach down.” (Crackers are bull shit. I’ve thrown up every type of cracker known to man). The assvice seems to be getting worse the bigger I get so I can only imagine how bad it will be by the time I actually have this baby. I know people are just trying to help but seriously – leave the sick pregnant lady alone. She’s a bit crabby.

Anyways! In the interest of actually posting to the blog more I thought I’d throw up (pun intended) a few distractions for while you’re patiently waiting for me to upload the cute ultrasound pics and not so cute giant belly pics.

Distraction #1:

Cracked’s Craptions.

Matt showed me this site the other night in an attempt to cheer me up. I laughed so hard I gagged. Seriously good stuff - and all it is is funny pictures that readers can caption. Hiliarous.

Distraction #2:

People’s Sexiest Men as reviewed by Mamapop

I def agree with the top 3 but dude …Zack Morris is still alive? WTF? Also the omission of Christian Bale and Jason Bateman makes me sad inside.

Distraction #3:

The Baby Name Voyager

I love visual representations of information so clicking around on different names and watching the graphs move to see how things have trended is just fascinating. And the new Namipedia is awesome. Is it wrong that I rated both Jeanne and Matthew as the highest for all categories? Just stuffing the ballot box a little.... Oh and if you really want to get sucked down an internet rabbit hole click on the NameMapper. It shows the popularity of a name by state over time. And there goes 3 hours of your life.

Have a great weekend everyone! Oh and if you're in Lakewood tomorrow night we'll be bar hopping to celebrate Carolyn's 25th! I'm sensing another Malleys stop to that pub crawl...

A list of Busy

So the last time I had a big long gap in posting was because I was so pregnant sick that I could barely lift my head off of the couch let alone worry about the blog… This time it’s the exact opposite. I’m finally… FINALLY… starting to feel like myself again. Knock on wood. So the past week and a half has been beyond busy. Let’s see… where to even start… How ‘bout with the most random:

1.) I went on a ridiculous baking jag last weekend.

I don’t even like baking. I only do it once a year at Christmas and that’s under the supervision of not only my mother but my grandmother. Usually I do the kid jobs like unwrapping the Hershey kisses or whatever…so it’s not even like I’m actually baking anything. But for some reason from the moment I woke up Sunday morning I was compelled to make lots and lots of cookies:

No seriously. Matt rolled out of bed at like 11 and by then I had already baked a batch of peanut butter cookies, made dough for 2 more types, and run to the grocery store for more supplies.

Apparently I have lost my damn mind.

2.) Our baby likes live classical music. I’m so not even making this up. Last week we were lucky enough to score tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra event at MOCA and the kid was jamming during the entire performance. I had never felt them move that much at one time. It was pretty crazy… For what it’s worth s/he liked the string quartet the best. So then when I had the opportunity to go to Severance with my mom on Sat. I was super curious to see what the baby would do. ‘Cause it might have just been a fluke. Yeah. Once again baby was jamming. It wasn’t as crazy as at MOCA but def. more than normal. So that’s kindof fun.

3.) We have started to rearrange our house to actually you know… have a baby in it. But because this is us we’re taking about things are starting to snowball. We don’t make little plans for anything. There will be much more on this later but for now let’s just say the next few months are going to be… interesting. Also oddly the baby’s actual room is last on our priority list.

4.) I’m taking prenatal yoga. Very outside my comfort zone. I’m trying… but it’s real hard to “send out peace and love to the universe” on the same day that you confirm that your insurance company only covers 80% of maternity hospitalization. I’d like to put the asshole who thought that was a fair policy’s head on a spike. The stretching part of the class is pretty good, though.

5.) Another extremely unlike me thing to do? Knit monogamously:

Seriously that is the only thing I’ve worked on in like a month. Especially at this time of year with the holidays coming up and the cold causing me to want handknits I’m a completely ADD knitter. But now? I haven’t really been distracted at all:

It’s all green baby sweater all the time. I think it’s the combo of the cables and the color that are holding my attention:

Whatever it is I’m one sleeve and some seaming away from having an actual finished project. First one of those in a while, huh!

6.) I know I owe the internet belly pictures. And ultrasound pictures. Hopefully I’ll get to those soon. But since I haven’t uploaded any of that yet how about a cell phone doggie pic instead:

Dexter likes being the sole dependant.