Am I the Only One???

Am I the only pregnant woman left who did not find out the gender of her baby at the ultrasound??? I certainly feel like it. Everywhere I go people ask me "What are you having?" and I answer "Oh I don't know we didn't find out...its going to be a surprise!" and then said person looks at me like I have two heads and usually replies with something like "Oh well isn't that interesting...but didn't you want to know? How will you decorate the nursery if you don't know?" Really????

I know it is so easy to find out the gender of your baby in this day and age. I know that the technology has taken the iffiness of the answer out of the equation and 99.9% of the time they get the gender right. I can understand finding out if you already have children and need to know for clothing or room painting etc. Then the technology and the ease at which a technician can tell you the gender of your child may make sense for you.

                                          **My Lil Sweet Pea**
But for me, this is my first child. This is my dream come true. This is my blessing from God after so many years of feeling as if I would never be able to have a child of my own. For me, not finding out the gender has only enhanced my entire pregnancy experience. For me-not finding out the gender of the Lil Sweet Pea came down to this thought "How many TRUE surprises does one get in a lifetime?" Not many. Not enough for me to say "Yes" when the technician at the ultrasound asked "Do you want to know the gender?" No, no not yet. I will find out when they put my Lil bundle of joy into my arms in the hospital.

So, we made some compromises when we decided not to find out the gender. The nursery is a gender neutral theme of Dr. Seuss. And we had to buy two outfits--one boy outfit and one girl outfit for the baby to come home in from the hospital. We don't have alot of actual clothes for the Sweet Pea but alot of PJ's., so for the first week the Lil one will be in his/her PJ's as we stock up on actual outfits. I don't think it will traumatize the baby though. I am pretty sure that the baby's priorities will be eating, sleeping, and diaper changing.

So do I regret not finding out the gender of my Lil Sweet Pea?? NO, not one bit. Because no matter what gender this Lil bundle of joy is--he/she already has my heart. I love this baby and can not to hold him/her in my arms in a few short weeks.

So am I the only one not finding out the gender of their baby?? Let me know your thoughts...

Much luv!
Laura

Obsessions

I tend to get obsessed as in totally absorbed in and must do or participate or buy or read or watch whatever my obsession at the moment is. It keeps me motivated to try new things (or at least I like to think it does!LOL)

Anyways past obsessions for me include:
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series
2. The color pink
3. Star Wars
4. Makeup tutorials on You Tube
5. Project Runway and then the subsequent need to buy a sewing machine to try to teach myself to sew (Hee hee still working on that!!)

And many others, but ya'll get the idea and I will definitely share more of my obsessions here on the blog (which is another new obsession of mine!) But once I have become obsessed with something I tend to stay a fan of said activity or book or show etc.

Well my newest obsession is Pinterest. OMG...have you been to this site?? I could pin and re pin things to my "boards" all day long and quite frankly have spent too many hours doing just that lately. Plus you can link it with your Facebook page and share all your "pins" with your friends. It is so much fun!!! Plus I find so many great craft, food, home and fashion ideas on there and new websites or blogs to check out. I am definitely in full blown obsessive mode with it right now. I love pinning pics and ideas to my boards. I love that I have followers who re pin my pins. I love commenting on the pins. I am spending way too much time on Pinterest right now!! But it is so addictive. I truly recommend you try it!

So that is my latest obsession right now...well that and the impending arrival of the Lil Sweet Pea!! LOL

As they say on Pinterest--Happy Pinning!!

Much luv!
Laura

Musings on the Aftermath of Hurricane Irene

I have never been in a hurricane before. Never really thought that Pennsylvania was actively hurricane prone. (It isn't..most of the time we just get the rains after a hurricane hits NC or VA)But wow, according to the local news coverage the last two days you would have thought we WERE in NC about to get hit by the eye of the storm and all hell was going to break loose!

                 *Hurricane Irene Sweeps into the area--everyone panic!!!!***

I do not want to belittle the news agencies or the reporters or the weather people but in the end I think they over hyped the storm and spread unnecessary panic. I mean really, here I am 9 months pregnant and there is nothing on TV except the hurricane coverage. My hubby had to drive his younger teenager back up to the mountains where she lives for the school year and I was home alone with nothing but the TV for company. Guess who got spun into a bit of a tizzy watching all that hurricane coverage?? Ummm yeah, that would be moi.

I kept texting hubby--"Should I fill the bathtub with water?" "Should I tie down the grill?" "What if I go into labor in the middle of the hurricane?"

Needless to say he wasn't thrilled with any of it. He has lived through hurricanes, he lost a house to a hurricane back in 1999. And as he continued to tell me and reassure me--we live to far inland--at most it will be a severe storm do not work yourself up over this. Did I listen to my husband's wisdom? Ummmm No. I took upon myself to move all the patio furniture with my big fat preggo butt and then for the rest of the afternoon dealt with Braxton Hicks contractions and freaked out over the possibility of going into labor alone in the middle of the storm.

The darn hurricane didn't hit until about 4 am here anyways. I slept through most of it. We sustained no damage. Hell our garbage can didn't even move. The winds here were not as strong as predicted by the weather people and in the end it was really just a summer storm with wind gusts.

 Now I am not saying there wasn't damages in other places or that there were not power outages and unfortunately some people sadly lost their lives. It is the right thing to prepare for the worst, to take precautions, and be safe. But my whole problem with this "Storm of the Century" was the over-hyped and panic stricken mayhem that was reported and over blown by the media. I mean for crying out loud the mayor of Philadelphia was on the news saying that residents should be prepared to go without power for two weeks! TWO WEEKS???? Seriously??? It was a Category 1 hurricane when it hit NC by the time it worked its way up the coast it was being downgraded to a tropical storm. My husband said they got slammed harder in 1999 with Hurricane Floyd and most news outlets referred to that as a "rain event". Really? Because that was the hurricane that wiped out not just his house but an entire neighborhood on the banks of the Neshaminy Creek.

                *The Neshaminy Creek after a big storm*

But Hurricane Irene was "the worst storm to hit land in 50 years" according to one news report. So not the case. Yes the rivers and creeks have flooded, there are downed trees and power outages but nothing like the mayhem and chaos I expected after two days of non stop news coverage.

                 *Do news reporters have to do this???*

So please media people take your need to over blow a situation to the extreme and shove it. Just give me the facts pure and simple and let me take rational and sane precautions. Never again do I want to be 9 months pregnant and in a tizzy because there is no other pressing news to report but a storm.

                 *The actual Schuylkill River*

This morning we got up went to church, went food shopping and ran our regular errands and while a bit windy and misty with rain it wasn't too bad. Our town seemed relatively undamaged. The creek flooded the park, but that has happened in other storms and the Schuylkill is rising and rushing and will probably flood by tonight but we are not in a low lying area and there are no residences in my town that sit that low for it to be a major danger. So hopefully everyone has made it and will make it through the last remnants of the storm and be safe. No need to lose your minds.

                                            **I looked exactly like this in the a.m doing errands lol**    

Stay safe!

Much luv!
Laura

Hurricane Irene and a Pregnancy Tidbit I was Unaware of...

Sooo the impending Storm of The Century--Hurricane Irene (or at least that is what EVERY news station will have you believe--even though she has been downgraded to a CAT 1...) is rolling into my neck of the woods today...yes it is dreary and grey and just a little bit windy. I will do my duty and put my patio furniture away and hunker down with the dog and kitties...but really the way the news is portraying this storm right now makes me think I should have hired Noah to build me an Ark!!!! OMG...can you say "trying to start widespread panic"?????

But anyways, in the midst of all the hyped storm coverage I learned something interesting. Did you know that low barometric pressure is often associated with the onset of labor???? Greeeeat...I so do not want to go into labor this weekend. So I think I am just going to have to squeeze my knees together and say no to the Lil Sweet Pea. There will be no labor during the hurricane! I have thus decreed that my final answer !!  I'm just sayin....

Much luv!
Laura

Random Thought

Note to self do not go onto You Tube or the Baby Center websites and type Labor and Delivery into the search...you will watch found birthing videos and then be freaked for the rest of the night by what is awaiting you in the next few weeks. You will be horrified yet fascinated. It is like a train wreck or really bad reality TV...you want to turn it off but you can't--you must know what is going to happen and then you see EXACTLY what is going to happen. OMG you think to yourself--I am going to have to do that??? Really this child inside me is going to come out of me like THAT???

(Now don't get me wrong I am an educated girl--had sex ed in school, graduated college etc...but the reality of labor--OMG whole different story and perspective!!!) 

You will want a C-section, you will want to be unconscious through labor, you will want to run screaming from the possibility that in a few short weeks it will be you laying on the bed in the hospital in a most immodest manner huffing and puffing...You may faint from the watching it...

You will drive your devoted husband batty with all the "What if.." questions and he will in no way sugar coat it when he says "You can't go back now..." and begins to laugh at your hysteria over the monstrosity that seems to be childbirth. He will walk back into the kitchen chuckling at his silly wife and you will bury your head in the sofa pillow trying not to scream hysterically!  Ahhh men they have it so easy...just standing there up by your head or holding your hand telling you to "breathe"...grrrrrrrr


For all my first time pregnant lovelies I say DO NOT watch the labor videos!!! I repeat DO NOT watch the labor videos!!! (Wish someone had told me that...hmmmph!) That is my random thought for the day!

Much luv!
Laura

Nursery In Progress

So I have been diligently working on our little nursery for a few weeks now. And when I say little..I mean little! We have a small house to begin with so we actually had to split our back room which was the office/exercise room in half to accommodate the nursery.

It has been a lesson in space saving and space maximizing for me. I am not in any way shape or form interior design minded so this has been a bit of a challenge for me. I had to make compromises and change my original "baby utopia" plan I started out with when I found out I was pregnant.

                                                    **Books, table, toys etc**

But as I said, compromises were made. For instance, our office desk and computer are still in the nursery. This is due in fact to a couple of reasons. First, the desk is a huge white corner desk from IKEA and it weighs a ton. Hubby did not want to move it and honestly there is nowhere else in the house it would fit and not look like a monstrosity. Secondly, with all the computer and other pieces of technology my husband has hooked up over in this corner I didn't think we would be able to reassemble all the wires, etc before the baby arrives!! Besides, the fact that the office equipment is on the desk, we also have a TV on the top portion and I figured in the end if the baby was going to be up at night and I was going to be out here may as well have the ease of access to the Internet and late night TV programming.

                      **2 Swings! One is for the Nursery and one   is for the living room!**(You can see our treadmill is still there!LOL)

Second compromise I had to make in the nursery was the exercise equipment. The original game plan was to move ALL the equipment out to the garage. Hubby bought a really nice heater and was going to have that installed for his workshop out there anyway. So we sectioned off the garage --front half is his workshop and the back half is the exercise area. Heater is in we just need the propane and the last bit of hooking up.

We moved the heavy ass weight machine out of the nursery and into the garage, and we moved the elliptical machine out in the garage, and Hubby is getting a heavy bag for out there too. However, as much as we got done in that department there seems to be some sort of issue over the last component parts for the heater out there. At this point it looks like we will not have the exercise portion of the garage done for the winter.

Which leads to my second big compromise in the nursery. The Treadmill. Yes, the treadmill is still in the nursery. Hubby runs 3 miles on it every morning before going to work. I, of course will have my butt on it after the baby arrives. It is not like we do not use the equipment...we do! However, my vision of a baby nursery did not really include a huge ass treadmill in the corner. But oh well compromises are made. So the Treadmill stays for the winter at least. Which on a positive I guess gives me no excuse to not work out every day!

                                                    **Crib with the playpen pieces in it--still organizing away!! See the end of the futon??? Cozy nursery!!**

Third compromise I made had to do with not getting a rocking chair or a glider. Again, like I said we have a tiny house and not much room for maneuvering big pieces of furniture. Back here we have a futon that was just bought before we found out I was pregnant. Its great because we don't have a guest room so when Hubby's mom came down from the mountains or my dad comes up from Florida we had a place for them to stay. I liked it ...we spent a pretty penny on it and it was cozy. However, we have nowhere else to put it and I was not storing it in the garage so compromise number three was made. I have no rocker but a really cozy futon that I just covered to match the nursery theme.

                       **A Dr. Seuss Growth Chart!**

So here I am working away on my little nursery and it seems like it is all starting to come together and look like an actual baby nursery. And I am sitting out here yesterday and the teenager comes in and looks around and says "Huh, none of the baby stuff matches. The stroller is black with plaid, the playpen is tan, the nursery stuff is Dr. Seuss and that play mat thingy is an ocean." Then she walks out. Ummmm can you say deflated??? I wanted to cry. Here I am spending the last few weeks stressing over this nursery trying to get it done and then she says that and I feel like everything is ghetto. Gosh, I hope it is just the end stages of pregnancy but I wanted to cry and then I wanted to slap her. But I didn't do either. I just kept plugging along back here trying to make it cozy and inviting as best I know how. Siiighhh.

                   **I love this book and this banner!!**

We pretty much had to get everything ourselves to begin with. My baby shower was extremely tiny due to many family issues and honestly I am not trying to sound ungrateful or greedy but we just didn't get much. We got lots of little things but all the big things were on us to buy and it has taken all summer to get everything in order. I just felt like yesterday all my hard work was for naught and that made me very sad. I don't want to be sad! This is supposed to be the most joyful time of my life and I feel like I am just overly stressed about the whole thing.

                     **Organizing the changing table**

Hopefully in the next few days the nursery will be completely set up and I will be able to relax and enjoy these last couple of weeks of my pregnancy. How did you handle the last few weeks of your pregnancies??

Much luv!!(And pictures of the completed Nursery will be posted soon!!!)
Laura

Whoa..Epic Fail

Hello there...yes I have totally failed as a blogger these past few weeks. I know it is an epic fail on my part too because I have so many things I want to write about and share! But sometimes life sort of intercedes and you get sidetracked. Well I did anyways and I apologize. But it was for a really good reason which I will share.

See about a year and a half ago I was physically assaulted and about two weeks ago we found out the scumbag was out of prison. Now you would think the D.A. would give me the courtesy of letting me know this dirt bag was getting out as they are supposed to do. As I was told they would do because there is a Stay Away order in place. But alas, I was not contacted by the D.A..No, I found out through Facebook of all places!

Grrr does not begin to describe how I felt. But a call to the DA's office has yet to be returned and in the meantime this waste of humanity is back to his old game. Uggggg...Needless to say the Hubby and I were not happy about the situation but we have all the legal orders in place--Stay Away Order that was ordered through the court judge and a restraining order (we knew this day was coming--however a little warning from the justice system would have been nice!) It is just not the stress I need as I am lumbering through my last few weeks of this pregnancy. So basically I have been running around and stressing this development and making sure everything that can be done has been done.

So that is why I have not been a very good blogger...I have not even read or commented on so many of my favorite blogs in the last few weeks...so I apologize for my epic fail in that department. But in good news the nursery is progressing along...just waiting on a few items to be delivered to complete it and then I will be posting pics! So that makes me smile!! But now that I am in a much calmer place and am just focusing on the Sweet Pea my regular blogging and commenting and posting can resume. I really do want to make a contribution tot he blogging sphere and will be ever more vigilant about posting from now on. Forgive me???

Thanx!!
Much luv!!
Laura