A pregnant woman's Christmas list.

1. Self cleaning clothes.
2. A new kitchen to magically appear on Christmas morning.
3. A new sleeping schedule for the world, instead of being awake 16 hours and asleep 8 everyone should be awake 8 hours and sleep 16.
4. A mute button on my children.
5. A case of twiced baked potatoes.
6. I want someone to replace every mirror in the city of Helena with those carnival mirrors that make you look skinnier.
7. I want the definition of sexy to become: a person with a large belly and puffy face. Justin Timberlake could even change his song.
8. To go out to dinner every night until the baby is born and not gain any weight.

Really though I all ready got a great Christmas gift, last week I felt the baby move for the first time. To me this is the best part of pregnancy. So merry Christmas to you all and here's hoping that you all have your craziest Christmas wishes come true!

16 weeks

Well today I am officially 16 weeks along so I decided to be really brave and do a weigh in on my trusty, or not so trusty depending on the day, bathroom scale. While I am not shouting my excitement to the skies, I am also not crying in my closet. I have officially gained 15 pounds, I would like to have done better by now, but I have definitely done worst in the past. So 15 pounds in 16 weeks, ugh. I even got on the scale three more times throughout the morning hoping for a drastic 5 pound difference, but no such luck. So if I can gain a pound a week for the next 26 weeks I wouldn't quite hit 40 pounds, that would be good, I can do that! Except next week is Christmas then new years and sweet stuff doesn't make me feel sick anymore, I am not exactly craving it, but lets face it, if it is there I will eat it. It is kind of like in field of dreams (my husbands favorite movie, which is about, surprise surprise, baseball). The big quote of the movie is "if you build it they will come". So that is me "if it is there, I will eat it". Today by "it" I mean an unopened box my sister sent me from Williams-Sonoma that I am pretty sure contains my favorite chocolate in the whole world. How long can I go without opening it, right now it is 9:18 so I give myself until about 9:32, but that is ambitious so we will see. So anyway I think I will wrap this up cause there is a box upstairs softly calling my name "Karen come open me, you want me, it will be so nice" 9:19 now 13 more minutes can she do it? Will she be able to resist temptation? Is she strong enough? Turn in next time to find out the exciting, no scratch that,... moderately engaging conclusion of this pregnant woman's dilemma.

My Favorite Dress

Yesterday as I was getting ready for church I decided that I should wear my favorite dress since it might be the last time I will be able to get into it. As we all know I have been out of my skinny pants and into my fat pants for quite a while now, but so far I have still been able to wear most of my dresses and skirts. So I get out my dress which is strapless, so I wear a sweater over it, it is fitted over the bodice and to the waist then flairs out and ends at my knees. It is all held up by a side zipper. So anyway I put it on and start zipping it, when I got to the small waist part it was rather tight than usual, so definite proof that this baby is getting bigger and expanding its womb up into my waist area. But I found that if I just sucked it in a little (which is a trick all women know how to do, I think it is instinct) it zipped up just fine and didn't feel that tight. So off to church where I sit and peacefully enjoy the meeting. My husband wasn't there because of other church responsibilities but my kids were all being really good so I was able to sit and quietly listen to the speaker thinking that life was pretty good. Then, due to this awful head cold I have had lately, I sneezed a big huge sneeze. At which point I heard a pop and all of a sudden my dress wasn't so tight around on my waist anymore. "Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap" that is what was going through my head as I reached over to where I would normally have felt a tightly closed side zipper, instead I felt a gaping hole "oh crap, oh crap, oh crap" what do I do, my zipper split and is splitting more buy the minute. Maybe if I stop breathing it won't split any more, okay that will only work for about 60 sec. My husband wasn't there and the meeting was almost over. So I pulled my sweater down and waited it out. After the prayer I quickly dropped my kids of at their primary classes while holding my dress together, by now you could see about two inches of control top pantie hose, jumped in the car and ran home to change clothes and get back to church for the rest of the classes.
As I was driving I thought "this does not happen to me, this happens to girls in fictional stories, or tv sitcoms". Then I started thinking back on my life to the time in third grade that I bent over, while at school, and my pants split up the middle. Or the time in fifth grade that I had the end of my pen in my mouth and it exploded all over my face, also while I was at school. Or the time when I was fourteen and I was running late to a church activity so I ran into my room, not bothering to turn on the light and grabbed my loafers out of the closet (yes it was the 90's and people wore loafers). When I was in the car I realized that I had grabbed one brown loafer and one black loafer. So anyway I figured no one will look at my feet anyway and it was an activity where bare feet were not an option. Things were going just fine until I was standing with a group of friends and completely lost my balance (seriously just standing there) and fell over, at which point one of the boys said "hey are you wearing two different shoes. Then there was the time I was sixteen, I got to first period and opened up my backpack to get my geometry book and what did I see, A DEAD MOUSE, I had briefly wondered why my cat was acting all funny around my backpack that morning. That one really freaked me out but I had to act like nothing was wrong while I asked my teacher if I could please go use the restroom. I am sure I was bright red and he probably thought I had just started my period because he gave me permission rather quickly. Then there was the time just a few years ago that I was walking outside minding my own business when a bird pooped right on my head, that was really disgusting. So after remembering all this I decided that I am either really clumsy, really cursed or both. I did decide for sure that I should not leave my house anymore. So start calling me a hermit and plan on traveling to Montana if you ever want to see me again.

I win, I win, I win!!!!!!!!

Take that Direct TV! Apparently all you have to do is threaten to cancel your account with them and they are suddenly very eager to give you your money. It was actually pretty funny. I sent an email to them saying how annoyed I was and that I wanted to cancel our services and what should I do to make that happen. Within a half hour I received an email from them with their "special" customer service number and a special pin I needed to use it. You see they finally saw that I meant business, thats right, don't mess with a pregnant woman. Really you think they would know better. So I called the "special" number with my secret pin, explained the situation and was offered a 100 dollar credit on our account effective immediately. The whole process took about 10 minutes, it was great. So the moral of the story is "threaten to take away your money and you get results". So I will no longer be calling Direct TV the evil empire anymore (that title can go back to the Yankees) but they are definetly on my watch list.

I hate direct tv

This post has nothing to do with pregnancy and everything to do with my anti-direct tv campaign. You see I HATE DIRECT TV!!!!!!!! Maybe this does have something to do with pregnancy because I generally don't hate companies with a passion, but man I do right now (blame it on the hormones). Anyway, we switched to Direct tv last summer because our phone company had a deal if we went with direct tv, some bundling thing. So that is great save a few bucks, couldn't be better. Well apparently when they hook up your receiver it costs a hundred dollars, but no worries you get the money back by filling our a simple rebate form. So I hunt down the form online and fill it out. Then I receive about 4 emails from them saying that it has all been approved and my check is in the mail. Well in August our life went crazy and we moved suddenly and I never got our check. Well in the last four weeks I have called Direct TV about 6 times trying to get our money. Each person I talk to has a different reason that I all of a sudden don't qualify for the money even though they all ready sent it to me and apparently it got lost in the mail. Then when I explain to them exactly why I should get the money all of a sudden they say "oh, of course, but we can't cut a check in this department, you will have to call this other person". Today someone told me I would have to track down the old check and that I should start by calling my post office. Who do they think I am, Sherlock Holmes! I am not Sherlock Holmes, I am a crazy emotional pregnant woman who wants her hundred dollars! The last person I talked to kept telling me how sorry he was but he couldn't do anything, I informed him that he wasn't sorry and then I told him what I thought of his company then asked him if it was worth losing our business over a hundred dollars (I was very tough and didn't even cry, pretty good for a pregnant lady). All he did was say "I'm sorry" over and over again like all of a sudden I wouldn't care if he kept saying it. It was like talking to a broken record. So we are going to switch back to dish tv because I am sooooooooo angry to be treated like that. It makes me wish that I could call people I owe money to, like the power company, and say I will not be paying you this month because your bill had blue and red lettering on it and I only pay bills that are written in orange and pink. Then when they kept asking me for money I would just say "I'm sorry" over and over again until they were ripping their hair out in frustration and decided to leave me alone. So anyway, I feel a little better now that I have vented, so thank you all for listening, and remember to spread the word about the evil empire known as Direct TV!

Happy 10 year anniversary, ya right.

So last week was our ten year wedding anniversary. Now most women love anniversaries and remember them fondly, but these women are not married to my husband. He is great, really he is, he sweeps, plays with the kids, earns a great income, doesn't ignore me for sports. These are all wonderful, but he doesn't have a romantic bone in his body. To him an anniversary is just another day. These are things he has said in the past on our anniversary. "I would have got you a gift but I was busy" once when our little boy was 2 weeks old and I had mastitis on our anniversary (which is about the most awful I have felt in my life), he got home from spending 10 hours on campus and said "happy anniversary here are your antibiotics, hahaha". Then there was the year that he thought going to see harry potter at the matinee was very romantic so lets go pick up the kids from the sitter. So as you can imagine we have gotten into a few slight tiffs on this day of days. So anyway this year he figured since he wanted to live he better make a big deal out of our ten year. So I have to give him credit he did great. Reserved a room for us at a bed and breakfast, took me out to a fabulously yummy dinner. The next morning we did some Christmas shopping and headed for the matinee after which we were going to go to a new restaurant for lunch. Oh and he even saw a chick flick for me. So anyway we are at the movie "Enchanted" and I am munching away on my movie theatre popcorn, because lets face it there is no way on earth I am going to make it from8:00 to 1:00 without food, when I start to feel sick. This is unfortunately pretty normal for me right now, that's right I am 13 1/2 weeks and I still feel nauseated every day. So as the movie goes on I am feeling more and more sick. Then there is this scene in the movie where rats are washing dishes with their tails, I think most people would think this was funny but I wanted to die, I had to close my eyes it was so disgusting to watch in the condition I was in. Anyway a few minutes later I was in the bathroom seriously considering getting rid of all the popcorn in me. These were my thoughts "oh my gosh I hate throwing up soooooo much" then "wait a minute my sister who is pregnant just threw up last week and assured me that morning sickness throwing up is much easier than stomach flu throwing up". I am trying to believe this but I have very fresh memories of the stomach flu last Christmas when most of the 25 people in my family got the stomach flu while we were all together, it was rather unpleasant but hey no one gained weight that Christmas, we all threw everything up or were too afraid eat for fear that we would be next. Any way these are my thoughts in the bathroom. Eventually it didn't matter what I thought cause my stomach was going to have nothing to do with that popcorn anymore. So I threw up then threw up more, and more, and more, and more, you get the picture, unfortunately. The whole time I was throwing up I kept thinking "my sister lied, this is as awful as the flu". I felt awful, my eyes were tearing like crazy, my stomach and throat hurt and my head started to pound and I only felt a little better. So after the movie when we were supposed to go out to our fun lunch I went home and took a nap and my husband picked up the kids. Later that day I figured I had a few more of those flu symptoms, so it wasn't morning sickness after all but the full blown stomach flu. So my sister probably is right about the morning sickness throwing up thing and I can tell you that having the flu while being pregnant is really not all that great. Also I think we are just not meant to have these great wonderful anniversaries, all though to be fair the dinner and bed and breakfast were great and my husband was so wonderful for the rest of the weekend to take care of everything so I didn't ever have to get out of bed. So maybe anniversaries and romance are overrated, or maybe we need to celebrate our anniversary on a different day of the year so the anniversary curse can't strike.