Christmas Day

Christmas Eve

Getting ready for the big day next.












Food to prepare--cookies for Santa and friends and neighbors, cheese ball for Christmas snack tray and a warm chipotle bean dip (from my favorite magazine) for this evening with friends.







Dear friends from Texas here in the evening and there's just never enough time with them. Pea is in love with them, especially the man, most likely helped out significantly by the way he keeps getting down on the floor with her and climbing through her cardboard box tunnel.




Presents to wrap, recipes for tomorrow to look over. My family and part of Jeffrey's will be here in the morning for breakfast till late. In bed later than planned but excited for the next morning...

Holidays

Here are the belated holiday postings. I'm still not feeling 100% but slowly things are heading in the right direction. Only a month till I should be done with the morning sickness part and I'm taking all kinds of things, natural and not, to help my insides heal.

Jeffrey had a 4 day weekend over Christmas and it was wonderful. He works so much and so hard and I'm so grateful for everything that we have as a result that I can't complain--but Pea and I love it so when we get more than a couple of hours with him, especially when they are hours unattached to the computer. He also gets some time off over New Year's and for once he's not on call either. We are canceling our annual New Year's Day Lasagna Party this time around as we have family coming into town next weekend, so we're looking forward to a relaxing few days.

Getting there...

(at the beach, August '07)

It started with severe morning sickness and it ended with a diagnosis of severe gastroenteritis, possibly Norovirus. You know, the one that killed all those older folks in nursing homes last year. I will spare you the link and the descriptions as it's all pretty disgusting. Suffice it to say that I was in bed for three weeks, in terrible pain (and I have such a high pain tolerance, thanks to childhood survivor issues), and almost no contact with Pea. I missed her like crazy.

I started to come out of the woods middle of last week and every day I feel a little bit better. I still have only small amounts of energy during the day. Something to do with living on crackers and electrolyte drinks for a few weeks, maybe.

I am so grateful for all the help with Pea we had from family and friends, especially my brother who stayed with us for over a week and took care of her morning after morning. He wins uncle of the year award. My mom and sister were also amazing. Pea now says "Attie" and "Ucgle".

As far as we know the baby is fine. I don't have an appointment for a couple of weeks yet, as I found last time around that early appointments cause more anxiety than they can ever solve and I'm not a fan of unnecessary tests. We'll just hope for the best.

More in just a few hours--Christmas, pictures, etc. Hope all of you had a lovely holiday.

Congratulations, Karli!

My friend Karli just had her baby! A beautiful little girl with an amazing name!

Congratulations, Karli, Landon, and Samuel! Can't wait to meet her!

Still sick

It's been a little interesting around these parts. For one thing there's the morning sickness, much worse than I had with Pea even though I'm healthier and no longer juggling a 50-hr/wk+ job. Then there's the viral infection I seem to have picked up from goodness knows where, even though (like I said) I'm healthier than I've ever been in my life, eat well, sleep so much better (with a child!) than I used to (I only started sleeping through the night the night my father died, when I was 18) and am the proud new owner of a pretty good immune system. So there's nausea and hot wool around my throat from the morning sickness, along with intense food-phobias. I'm no longer sure that I can be friends with people who eat tuna. And turkey. And cabbage. And cooked broccoli. And then there's the fun the virus has brought me: more nausea, stomach-cramps, and other things I shall not mention in public. Because deep down I am still a lady.

I have hardly left my bed in a week and a half. Jeffrey has been amazing, as always, but every day I have to fight panicky thoughts about how behind he is at work thanks to me needing so much help with Penelope. Thank goodness for family--once again I am so very, very thankful that I have them close by and that they are available to help. I don't know what I would do without my little brother! He's been staying with us and taking care of Pea for most of the daylight hours. Just when I thought I was going to have a nice, relaxing winter after the busiest summer of our lives...

I'm trying to remind myself that once this part is over you forget it so quickly because good things start happening, like your belly looking really and truly pregnant instead of oddly bloated, appetite returning, strength coming back. I'm ready, people. I want to squeeze every last drop of these last months of being just the three of us--I want to be spending every waking minute just hanging out with Pea and asking her the questions that she gives funny answers to, dancing with her to her favorite songs (Feist's entire songbook, Regina Spektor's hits, "Jingle Bells", and "The Wheels on the Bus"), and baking cookies because it's Christmas and she's finally old enough to help. I want to be able to sing her to sleep every night while I still have energy and am not yet cranky from being up all night with a newborn. Sounds greedy. I feel greedy. And very, very, very sick.

6.5

It's early, and therefore a bit risky to put this out there I know. But I've been horribly, awfully sick and that combined with the holiday season and everything there is to do and everything I WANT to do for Pea--well it all adds up to busy next few weeks and I'm going to try and blog it as best as I can, but if I don't here's the reason why. It's a good one, peoples.


(Ready? Guessed it yet?)


I'm pregnant. Not quite 7 weeks. It's REALLY early to be telling, but at this point in my life it's harder and harder to keep these things a secret. And honestly, if anything unplanned happens I would rather that people already know this part.

So far, I am much sicker than I was with Pea. Much. It's awful and I'm looking quite seriously into our return policy.