What to Expect

It’s been about 3 months since my last post. I’ve been silent for a couple reasons: 1. I’ve been waiting until we’re “finished” with a room to show you before and afters of the house. 2. About 3 months ago, I learned some exciting news that I couldn’t share and was so focused on that I didn’t know what else to write about.

The big news, for those of you aren’t on facebook and don’t check your emails, (and of course for all 2 of you who don’t actually know me) is that I’m pregnant. We're thrilled and feel very, very fortunate. I’m 17 weeks now and starting to show quite a bit. We had decided not to announce the news until I was out of the 1st trimester, just in case. (Of course I blabbed to a few close friends and family members). And I'll be honest, hiding such huge news from everyone we know was very difficult. And between the fatigue, nausea, and lying to everyone we know, it was an interesting couple of months. I’m feeling great now – pretty much back to normal – which has been an issue I didn’t foresee, mainly because I keep forgetting I’m pregnant.

While I’ll try not to turn this into a pregnancy and mothering blog, I will warn you all that some of those posts will definitely be coming, since that’s what’s new in my life. I’ll try to keep them to a minimum though.

So for those of you not interested in hearing about my thoughts on the early stages of pregnancy, you can stop reading here (or scroll down to the book review). No hard feelings, I promise.

My sister-in-law recently sent me a blogpost on pregnancy written by Elisa Donovan (AKA “Amber” from Clueless) and while her symptoms seemed to be much worse than mine, I found it to be pretty accurate. All of a sudden, your body isn’t just yours anymore. It does new things you have no control over. It changes in ways you would normally hate in any other circumstance, but have to learn to accept now. And if you thought you were in touch with your body before, you’re in for a rude awakening, since you’ll have NO idea what’s going on half the time. Google becomes your encyclopedia. TheBump.com is your Bible. Pregnant friends or those with small children are on speed dial. You feel like this weird alien creature that needs to pretend to be human. You feel fat, but you know your belly is supposed to be growing. Your pants don’t fit, so you reluctantly buy a belly band – and then grow to love it. As your belly grows, you have to fight that instinct to suck it in that we’ve all succumbed to at some point in our lives. You forget things. You hate foods you used to love. Your sense of smell is heightened to almost comical levels (I say “almost” because you learn pretty quickly that there are way more horrible smells than there are good ones). The perpetual nausea is annoying and the fatigue is mind-blowing (I never knew I could be THAT tired, all the time). But then you get to see the fruits of your body’s labor at the first trimester ultrasound and that thing that was just a collection of cells a few weeks ago is moving around, kicking its legs, and rolling over. And every ache, every minute spent struggling to stay awake, every second of nausea is worth it. And while I know that sounds cheesy, it's totally true. 

On My Nightstand:

When JK Rowling announced she was writing another book, I was thrilled and immediately pre-ordered it from Amazon. The Casual Vacancy came a couple of months ago, just after it was released and I've slowly been reading my way through it. I love Rowling's style of writing. It was one of the things I loved most about the Harry Potter books. And this book did not disappoint on that front. It did, however, take me awhile to get into it. It was a long book, with a lot of characters, and much of the book was spent on character development and plot buildup. If you're willing to stick through it and understand that the story is about the characters themselves and their relationships to one another, it ends up being enjoyable. It just took awhile to get there. By the end though, I found myself invested in the characters and their lives and wanted to read more and more. So, while this wasn't the compelling creative and magical wonderland that was the Harry Potter series, it was well written, well developed, and an overall good read.