basketball tournament

i love this man so much i woke up way too early to eat cliff bars all days and watch him play in his annual basketball tournament. if you've ever tried to get a pregnant woman out of bed sooner than she thinks she should be or been said pregnant woman getting out of bed way sooner than you know you should be then you understand the type of love i'm talking about. this is real sacrifice, people.

but really, i love watching his basketball tournaments. he's so good. and so TALL, everyone is pretty much terrified of him. i was so proud of his team, this year and last, for performing so well after practically no practice together. improvisation is their strong point. and being the most handsome team. fo sho.

my jobs are to hold the water [which i'm semi good at], cheer [which i get better at the more i think i know what's actually going on], and yell at incompetent score keepers [i'm super good at this. i had to stop those ladies from giving the other team our point about five times. psh, hoes.]

here's how else you know for sure i did this out of pure, true love: sweaty, muscular, sinewy man legs in short-shorts do nothing for me. i had absolutely no ulterior motives.

well, maybe a couple ulterior motives. for starters, there's this guy. he's super handsome. i want him to like me. watching sports is how you get guys to like you, right? also, he has to take me to a farmer's market now in return for me getting up early to cheer him on. someone tell him this so he knows. lastly, i love traditions. this is two years in a row that i've been there. next year i want to slather a little five month old in sunscreen and dress him up in a little team shirt so he can cheer for daddy. i've agreed that squirt will be good at basketball, but he does not have permission to play golf. it's going to take a lot more farmer's market trips for me to agree to golf. hint hint.

joe's burgers

sometimes there comes a day when you just have to break your "no eating out ever" rule. and on those days you and your cute babydaddy enjoy a delicious, greasy, unhealthy, over priced, amazing burger.

that burger will take 1.28467 years off my life. but at least squirt got some lettuce and tomatoes in him, right?

12 weeks

i opted to go ahead and do the first initial screening tests as part of my prenatal care. They include 1. a small finger prick proceeding vicious squeezing of finger to squish out enough blood to fill multiple circles on a little piece of paper 2. ultrasound measuring fluid at the back of baby's neck and 3. more blood being sucked out of my arm at some future date.

there may be more steps, i'm not sure, i wasn't paying attention. just kidding, i was, i'm just not super into it. from what i gather all of these things combine to give you a rough calculation of the possible chances that something might be wrong [not all things just certain things, like spinal bifida and downs syndrome], and it may or may not be a reliable determination. pretty iffy. my first baby doctor was a midwife who tried to convince me how absolutely necessary it was for me to do the more invasive screening tests with the amniotic needle, she said the chance of miscarriage was worth it. she said there was only a 1 in 100 chance of the giant, huge, terrifying amniotic needle invading my child's place of refuge resulting in miscarriage. but that's the same chance for babies born with any birth defects. i personally didn't like those chances, it just wasn't worth the risk to me, especially since no matter what they told me may or may not be wrong i wouldn't even consider termination, so it doesn't seem to serve a purpose for me. my new doctor is sweet and wonderful and doesn't really try to force any of the screening tests, she said the first few are safe and just give a general idea and the amniotic screening isn't for everyone. so why would i even opt for the little screening tests that don't really give you solid answers? because they do this AWESOME, industrial, detailed ultrasound. and then they give you PICTURES. and i wanted in on that. it was way worth the finger prick followed by death grip squeeze. way.

as much as i adore these pictures, they really are nothing compared to what craig and i were seeing at the time. the quality of the pictures isn't even comparable. we saw everything! it made us so giddy, craig couldn't stop gasping and giggling. i wanted to squeal with joy, but i had to hold my tummy still. so i just laid there with my mouth open mostly.

our little squirt is a doll. and he's absolutely ridiculous! i always picture him lying there very still in a curled up position, thinking deep thoughts or sleeping, and every time i see him he totally surprises me. when the image came through we caught him in the act of MOVING. A LOT. he was almost DANCING! he wiggled and rocked back and forth a whole bunch, like a rocking horse, and kicked his legs and scooted around. it was so incredible. but as soon as the ultrasound technician started taking measurements of the back of his neck [checking for spinal bifida, but he's absolutely perfect, and she said there's no worries so far] he held very, very still. then she was going to tell me to cough to try to get him to roll over, but before she could get all the words out he rolled right on over for her.

such a sweet thing! but so ACTIVE. it's ridiculous. he waved his arms all over the place like crazy, like a drummer or something. i couldn't believe how much he can do already. or how much we could see! i'm only 12 weeks a long and he's already huge. and there's so much about him that we already know for sure. he has all ten fingers. he has two arms and working elbows. he has all his toes, precious little feet, and surprisingly long legs, i think. at one point the technician gave us a view from his head looking down at his legs and they were bent and bowed in a little froggy stance. and most of all he has the BEST little nose ever!

look. at. that. nose. we could see it so clearly. and we could see his little heart, and we heard it beat again. it's so strong and regular. it looks like a muscle now! before it just looked like a flashing light, but this time craig and i could see the different halves of it squeezing, like a real heart! well, it is a real heart. i can't believe how perfect little squirt is. every time there isn't something wrong with him i'm just blown away. everything we can see so far is all how it should be.

he's so very special. and a little bit of a drama queen, haha. he kept resting one hand up on his forehead and it looked soooo dramatic. maybe squirt is a girl after all? at one point squirt had both his little hands on both his little cheeks and i just wanted to die, it was so precious. i wish we had a picture of that. it was way too cute. oh, and she showed us his bladder which was SUPER full [i know where that stuff goes when i'm not looking, don't think you're fooling me squirt] and his stomach too, which she also said was super full.

the yolk sack is almost non-existent, where just five weeks ago it was bigger than he was. now that he's eaten it all up [i'm sure that's not entirely accurate, but bear with me] he's going to move on to my new developing placenta. just so you know, i HATE the placenta. i don't hate that it keeps my baby alive, but i hate thinking about it's existence. i didn't know about the placenta until after my last pregnancy. and it just sounds so very inconvenient. that's really my biggest problem with it. after doing the most physically challenging thing of your life, your body has grown this perfect child and you just spent a ridiculous amount of pain filled time bringing him into this world, all i would want to do at that point is snuggle my new baby. but no. you're not done. you then have to give birth to the placenta, and i'm not sure how much effort you have to put into it at that point, but it sounds ridiculously distracting. hopefully i'm overreacting. the placenta is making me mad again though because she told me it's developing at the very front of my uterus. she says that's fine, but i don't approve. i always picture is as this huge slimy mass, and if it gets in the way of me feeling my babies little kicks and punches, imma kick it's butt. you hear that placenta? you watch yourself.

i could just watch him on an ultrasound all day long. i just love knowing he's there and apparently enjoying himself.  i hope he likes it just as much out here. we're completely giddy thinking about him, or her, and how soon little squirt will be here and we can finally bestow all these kisses we've been saving up!

rice time

mondays are eat-out days for me and craig. it's our family home evening time together, plus kinda date night rolled into one. squirt enjoys it, and he's part of the family, so it counts. being increasingly pregnant, my life is more and more revolving around good food. foodfoodfoodfoodfood. i want it all the time. this summer we're trying to eat at all new places. today we tried a little place hidden down the road called "rice time." let me break it down for you:

• free soup while you wait for your food. i LOVE that cheap oriental soup, the kind with water and carrots and like cabbage or something. what is that called?? i want to have a pot in my house at all times. how do they make it so good?
• free salad bar. oh snap.
• free candy on your way out.
• free lemon water. this wouldn't have been too excited except for how it had LEMON in it.
• awesome teriyaki lunch specials. i got somethingsomethingchicken, it came with rice and a salad. craig got somethingsomethingwe don't remember, with tons of meat and lots of rice. 
• a giant array of sauces to choose from and use at any moment.
• super friendly service
• the food was crazy delicious. i wish i was eating it right this second. you should too. go eat there. now. 

hey, have you met my super cute husband craig? he loves good food too. he finishes what my prego body suddenly decides it doesn't want anymore for me. and somehow he's been LOSING weight. seriously, he's looking soooo fiiiine. and i'm a hippo. what's up with that? not cool.

boy or girl

this is something that's been on my mind on a daily basis recently. along with babies and food and sleep, haha. i find myself talking about it all the time in response to curiousness. it's the big question with babies, it's the huge mystery that, understandably, dictates the rest of their lives: boy or girl? i've been calling little squirt a "him" even before i was calling him squirt. i think i even got my doctor to start saying him instead of "the baby." something people almost always ask me when i'm talking about him is if i know if he's a boy already. i end up answering them a little different every time, but my opinion on the matter stays the same.

i'm almost twelve weeks now [almost done with the first trimester! yes!] even though he's for sure what he's going to be forever by now, they can't actually tell via ultrasound until like 18 or 20 weeks or something. and even then, did you know what they determine can be inaccurate? i always thought as soon as they could see little baby gender parts it was set in stone. apparently even at that point it's sometimes questionable, and they come out different that expected all the time! so how do i know so clearly that he's a boy? maybe i don't! but i totally do ;]

even before i got pregnant, when i still thought i had months and months left before being pregnant again, i thought our next baby would be a boy. i thought sable would have a little brother next before she was even gone. it was just a speculation plus some feelings, a little glimpse into where our family may be in the future. i knew so clearly that sable would be a girl. i could feel her spirit and her personality so strongly. and i'm glad for that, because right now my feelings are my only real confirmation of who she was.  i've heard of a lot of women just knowing immediately what baby they were having. craig's mom woke up the day after her wedding and said she was pregnant and it was a boy, and 9 months 3 days later there he was. she knew with all four babies. sheri told me she always knew with all her kids long before anyone else did. i know a family back home who never let the doctor tell them the gender of the baby, the dad always guessed and he was always right [except for the last boy who was supposed to be a girl. surprise! hehe]. but not everyone "knows" and not everyone who "knows" is right, lots of times women think they're having one and end up surprised. so far i've had no experience or confirmation of if my notions are generally accurate. but they could be!

so when i called my mom for the first time all excited about this new little one and she asked me what i thought i was having this time i told her "i think he's a boy." and she said before i even answered she thought he was too, she had a feeling. i told cori and clint that i thought he was a boy [they're first grandbaby!] clint shouted that he KNEW it was. haha i think he wants a grandson =] i know often what we think we want to have plays into what we think we're having. after being so prepared and eager for a baby girl having to turn around and start preparing for a baby boy has been completely different. i know i want both, boys boys boys and girls girls girls, boys just like craig for me to snuggle and spoil and little curly haired girls to melt craig's heart. i know that one way or another our family will be complete and everyone will get here who is supposed to be here, and i won't be upset by how it turns out or who is a boy and who is a girl. i'll be happy with anything because that will be my family that i'm supposed to have.

so why even speculate? if i don't mind either way, why not just wait and see for sure? for a couple reasons. one is that i really don't like calling babies "it." i know there's ways around that, saying "the baby" or fetus nicknames. but every once in a while you need a pronoun in there somewhere, and i'd rather pick one gender to run with and have a 50 percent chance of being right than call him "it" for so long and KNOW that you're not right even once [unless i'm wrong and you know of any babies that were born its. but don't correct me.] to me it's more personal to refer to him as who i think he is. so, what if i'm wrong? what if he turns out to be a girl? well, i think i'll just assume he was really a boy until right that second and then decided to switch on me. and she'll wear the batman onesie and be happy about it. and she may turn out to be a tomboy or gender confused because of my thoughtlessness. oh no. the consequences are severe. but really, it's not going to kill him/her. it won't even phase the little ball of cuteness. the worse that can happen is you all get to laugh at me when i'm wrong. and that's not so bad for you guys, right?

i also really like being prepared. i like worrying about things ages before it's time to worry about them. i'd like to slowly get the room ready and arrange things the way i think he'd like them. okay okay, i like to buy baby things, i admit it! i look at baby clothes all the time. having a guess in my head gives me some sort of direction. i'm just not happy with looking at yellow and green blankets, and want blue and black and brown and manly things! or red and coral or lavender sweet girl things. if i have to look at/buy for BOTH genders, my brain would explode! the downside is that i may end up with piles of boyish things and have a little girl squirt decide she wants to come hang out on earth. but then i get to do MORE baby shopping, so i guess it's not so bad, especially since we're rolling in the dough. ha. ha. ha.

this is all a lot more information than i give people when they ask about my excessive use of "he" and "him" while the length of my tummy is still due to my own chubbiness and the insane amount of food i've been eating rather than to the size of the baby. i usually say "i think he's a boy," or i tell them i don't like calling babies "it." and no one really minds, unless i start saying how much i "know" he's a boy. because i can't really know. i can't, but i just do. i still want to try to confirm it in september, so i can switch tracks if i have to, but i can't honestly really KNOW until he's here. i just have a very strong feeling. but i could easily be wrong. EASILY. i love him to tiny pieces but i don't know him as well as i knew sable, he's a little mystery to me. so instead of "know" maybe i should say "i really really really really really think. and i'll be insanely surprised if i'm wrong." and if he's a girl we can all laugh at how sure i was. i think it'll be a good indication to how much i know what i'm doing here [hint: not at all]. it's also possible squirt will have his first time-out when he decides to become a she. trying to make a fool out of your mamma? where does it end, squirt? hahaha =]

lincoln city

craig and i used our weekend to take a drive to the ocean. we chose lincoln city to visit. for our anniversary next month we're going to visit depot bay and tillamook. now i just need to convince him that we need a trip to newport for some mo's chowder. mmmmmm.

we got up super early so we could go at low tide. low tide is our very favorite, we love finding creatures at the ocean. this was the most creature filled trip we've had yet! we had quite a few discoveries:

1. we found our first ocean fish. it was huge. and also dead, the seagulls were feasting upon its eyes. it still counted though.

2. i found my first live, wild muscle. we always only find their pretty, empty shells, but i found two today that were still housed some living things. they had huge barnacles all over them. barnacles scare me. if you listen they sound like tiny, shrieking birds and they look like they have beaks.

3. i saw/touched my first wild hermit crab. i've never even seen a hermit crab in captivity, they're way shy and i only ever see their shells. i always pick up pretty shells to see if they're empty and they usually have snails in them, but then i picked up a huge one with a big ol' crab inside with big ol' claws! after that we found a bunch more little ones.

4. i held my first star fish ever. all the ones we've ever seen in the wild or aquariums have been firmly attached to something. this time we found a purple one in the sand and i cuddled him a little bit.

5. we found this tiny little crab running around. he was way too tiny to eat, so i let him live. haha.

6. i collected seashells for the first time. we can never find any unoccupied, but this time we hit jackpot. craig was sweet and made sure i left enough for little creatures to live in but still let me take a few home.

i get so giddy at the ocean. craig is always such a trooper when he takes me, he drives the whole way even though he knows i'm going to fall asleep both ways no matter how much i promise i won't. and he still loves taking me. i'm the worse travel companion. i blame squirt. he makes me sleepy. man, what am i going to do when i don't have pregnancy to blame for everything?

after all of our adventures we were staaaaarving. STAAAAARVING. so naturally we hit up the casino. isn't that every under-aged, pregnant, mormon couple's response? i think it's so funny that craig has never been to a casino until now and that i've gone to casinos a bunch of times! it's pretty backwards, since he's been old enough to actually enjoy the sins of a casino for years. but that's not why i go. years ago my parents discovered how amazing casino buffets are and i'm pretty sure we went to one for my birthday dinner four years in a row. for a lunch buffet it was ten dollars for each of us and it was such a steal. the only thing that i missed about dinner time buffets was the steak. but they had crab legs. all you can eat crab legs. oh. man. craig left with that notoriously painful i-just-ate-at-a-buffet feeling in his tummy. i wasn't even full. i stopped eating because i was keeping him waiting for hours and he was on the verge of a dangerous road nap. i didn't really eat for HOURS more than he did. it was just close.

you better believe we had the longest nap of the summer when we got home. it was glorious.

mermaid tears

i have this little crush on opi nail polish. don't tell. it's actually more than a crush, i love it. it's the only nail polish i'll buy and it's almost the only nail polish i own [there's still some mary kay colors floating around here]. it all started when my big sister drashell got me some fabulous colors for my birthday one year. and just like that is was out with wet and wild [yuck], and in with opi forever! a couple more came from my mommy, a few from me, and my little sister ahnahceleh decided she didn't like a few of hers so she gave them to me in exchange for stealing both my bottles of black. it was a fair trade, i had used the heck out of one of those blacks anyway. silly emo phases.

three of my favorites came from my mommy just before i moved. it was a special line of awesome, bright colors and she said they just looked like me. she bought me one at a time until i had my three favorite out of the five: mod-ern girl, green-wich villiage, and the "IT" color. did i mention opi gives all their nail polish awesome names? well, they do.

yesterday craig and i got up early to go to the grand opening of a fred meyer in our town [yay sales and coupons and free things and free dvd of rango!] the night before i had a dream that they had opi nail polish there and i was so excited, it's hard to find sometimes and in my dream it was one of the last places you could find them on the whole planet. which is silly. but the fabulous part is that the new fred meyer DID have opi nail polish there! and craig got me a bottle. it's gorgeous. it's called "mermaid's tears" and it's from the new pirates of the caribbean on stranger tides inspired line of colors. how sweet is that?

i still haven't forgiven myself for not getting a hold of the alice and wonderland opi line while it was around. my heart aches when i think i could've owned "mad as a hatter," or "off with her red." getting a pirates color on sale though almost makes up for it. almost.

onesie, twosie, threesie

craig's hottie sister catie went a little auntie crazy recently and it was kind of the most fabulous. i wanted to hug her to bits. as you can see, she has excellent taste in baby clothes and already knows what squirt likes best.

 that elephant just kills me. as does the collar. i wish he would just get here so he could try this on.

because a batman onesie is obviously a must. isn't she brilliant?

and a dress and tights for future little girls [ah!!] or just in case squirt decides he really wants to be a girl. it could happen. but even if he is a girl he's still wearing the batman onesie, and those are the rules.

oh, and one time in walmart craig and i decided we couldn't leave without it. squirt already has a favorite super hero. you should see his first pillowcase, it's all batmaned up and already on a pillow waiting for him. you can tell we have our baby necessities all lined up. best parents ever.