You Tell Me

Comparison Photographs:

--> 8 months
pregnant with
baby 1



<--
33 weeks
pregnant with
Baby 2

Only One

This is me 38 weeks pregnant with caleb. I feel like i look this way right now, but i'd need outside verification for authenticity. We are our own worst critics...are we not?

let me give you a preface to what you are about to read. These thoughts originated sunday. it was a day of children--i teach sunbeams (~10 kids, 3 yrs old) and the 4-5 yr olds. My partner and i are filling in for the sunbeams. Caleb is 2 1/2, rambunctious and adorable. I am 33 weeks pregnant. These facts do not add up to a particularly spiritual sunday.

I taught a lesson about how our bodies are special and essential to our progression in this life. Last night as i sat in my bath, staring at my bulging belly watching it shift and move around from colton doing whatever it is babies do in-utero i had a thought:
Only One Body
we only get one body...and i am making coltons, well my body is making it.
Pregnancy is Sacred!
Sure, its difficult! It hurts in weird ways. My sides frequently feel like they might split open, i have contractions that take my breath away (literally), my feet hurt-ache and the tingling sensation in my hands from swelling sorta freaks me out.

Despite all this, how many times do we give life...like this? All we, as women, ever discuss is the negative and discomforts and difficulty-perhaps because they are so all-consuming and seemingly everlasting...

but

it is special. Once-in-a-lifetime (or however many kids you have) special. I mean look at your kids. Watch them breathe--you did that. You, me, our mothers...we made that. Sure, it isn't a conscious making, but the two years of giving up ourselves to share our bodies with a beautiful and miraculous little parasite (think science people!)...we are amazing. Our bodies are amazing. How anyone can think we evolved from an ameoba clearly has no sense of the wonder in the mirror.

1 corinthians 3:16
Know ye not that ye are the ^atemple of God, and that the ^bSpirit of God dwelleth ^cin you?

I struggle to breathe. I can't be active because i get contractions so bad. My legs look like cottage cheese-something i don't think i have ever seen to this extent on my own body. I am planning on a c-section and for the pros it offers, i dont love the major surgery part. I envy women who get to walk around and pick up their babies right after the birth. I also have a very hard time getting pregnant and both of these boys are miracles in my book.

yet i think of the scripture above and i wonder how many more times do i get to do this: create another life, truly blossom as a woman, relish (okay okay and fear) the prospect of the future life inside me?

I am well aware of the cliche nature of this post. I know we all hear "seize the day" and "appreciate who you are" and whatever else that makes us all feel better about ourselves. But i tell you what: sitting their, watching my gargantuan belly and poking-out-belly-button shift around to the rhythm of my unborn son, grunting when he has an overly-well-placed kick; this epiphany hit hard and hit home. What i am doing matters. It isn't just some negative experience meant to bring misery to women-kind. We have the agency, the opportunity to choose how to deal with these struggles.

Do my legs still gross me out? yes. Am i petrified that i will never have flat abs ever again? oh, yes. Do i fear what the intense and overwhelming first year will bring emotionally? Oh, hell yes!

but i watch caleb run around and discover new things and smile and none of it matters. I'd die for that little one and i'd die for this unborn son. My vanity, ego and pride need to be shelved anyway.
This challenge and honor is an opportunity to rise above the base human and search for the divine within.

An update

I do not have a whole lot to say however i realized it has been a very long time since i last blogged so i thought i'd update--sans photos. Sadly, photo taking is not my forte (could be my camera is a piece of crap :))

I did a thanks-book for thanksgiving. Every day in november i texted my in-laws (who we were spending thanksgiving with) and asked what they were thankful for. Everyone answered as often as they wanted, disclosing as much as they wanted and their were no obligations. Rob, and I and Caleb did it daily. Caleb was always grateful for Jesus and crackers. It was so nice to make an effort to focus on thanks-giving--literally. The focus on all we have was refreshing. I was actually sad to have it end. I put all the answers in a scrap book and took it to Thanksgiving Dinner. It was so much more than i anticipated.

Our december was pretty calm. I am not one to enjoy being busy. I ended up having a lot of contractions so i hunkered in and took it easy. My cousin had her baby at 32 weeks and all of us have had her family in our thoughts and prayers. Thus my family has been very concerned about all my contractions. After a bunch of tests we determined i am a spazy-freak (i was contracting every 20 seconds during the non-stress test. I couldn't feel most of them but every now and then they are pretty strong) but the baby is happy, healthy and thriving--and i was not at risk for preterm labor. Can't ask for much more than that!!

Christmas was wonderful, caleb got spoiled and so did i. We spent so much time with families, Rob got to go snowboarding on christmas eve-minnesota family tradition. Unfortunately i was not able to participate so my mom and sister-in-law stayed home too and we made christmas dinner. It was lovely and enjoyable. Caleb was pretty good too. Rob got 200 tulip bulbs for christmas and true-to-form rob was outside planting them two days before christmas. Caleb was outside for the whole process--dressed as warm as he could be and a pink nose to boot. But he was in heaven, our little boy LOVES working outside with daddy!

I have discovered essential oils and bought some through a friend. I have fallen in love! And even though rob is so much more hesitant (scientific really) to fall in love-he really likes them as well. I feel so empowered.

I had to do the 3 hour glucose tolerance test. I tell you what--it was easily the most awful thing ever! I can totally understand why pregnant women are not asked to fast! After 18 hours of not eating (other than the nasty glucose crap) i felt like i had been hit by a bus. I was thrown off for two days...i felt pathetic.

We are all looking forward to the arrival of our next bundle. I vacillate between being petrified of having him out of me and dying of discomfort. Caleb is pretty excited. He got a new cousin just before thanksgiving and since then he has been very aware of babies and making sure mom and baby brother are ok. Any time i make a noise of discomfort Caleb is quick to ask "mom ok?" So endearing!

Asian Potato

I am always looking for good Asian food. Most of the time, i seem to find very greasy pretend food. Long has my frame of reference been Panda Express. Recently, in one of my craving-and-sick moments, i asked Rob to get us Panda for dinner. He said ok, loaded up caleb and away they went. They came home, the house filled with the smell of Panda, we loaded up our plates and i prepared for my dreams to come true as i dug in. It was good when i started eating but as i continued disappointment creeped into my soul and taste-buds. At the end i realized that even to my salt-loving-pregnant-self it was too salty. It was also very greasy and the orange chicken...i was not sure if their was chicken in it.

Perhaps, you are shouting in your head "you IDIOT!--Panda as your standard?!!" I told rob of my letdown and in a way only rob can manage he chuckled and said "i knew this would happen as i left the house but i got it so we could get this over-with" Bless his heart, he didn't want panda but he got it for me knowing i wouldn't like it! wow i feel lucky.

Now my point: i have found a new point of reference!!! Click here to see menu: Asian Potato. It is a new restaurant over on 8745 So. 700 E on the east side of the road. we went with friends last night and we each have a son the same age (one month apart) and we are both pregnant (one month apart). The boys did pretty good and our waitress was doting. Granted, we were the only group there but still...be kind, it is new. It is clean and delicious! I really liked their plates and glasses (i love dishes in general, i always check out the dishes of restaurants). Oh! and they do take-out.

I got Cashew Chicken and it will filled with veggies and real tender white chicken. It comes with steamed rice but we all wanted fried rice so they gave us a complementary order of fried rice. our friends have a talent for getting deals on things. The Cashew Chicken entree could easily feed rob and i (sayin something since i have been eating like a cow lately and rob eats a lot anyway). we got egg rolls and they were delicious! I would like to try the spring rolls next time. Rob got Orange Chicken and he let me have some...unbelievable. NOTHING like panda. You could taste the citric flavor of real orange juice...ahh it was so good!!!! And you could see big chicken pieces with a bit of breading-rather than the other way around. (wink wink panda). Oh! we shared with caleb along the way and he seemed satisfied with the food and was chatting-up the waitress. Maybe it was because she got him soda...:)

The damage:

Cashew Chicken $7.95
comes with steamed rice

Orange Chicken $7.95
comes wtih steamed rice

Ham Fried Rice $6.85
This is an entree sized plate so it fed 4 adults (2 pregnant women and 2 hearty-eating men) as a side dish.

Egg rolls 2 for $3.15
Spring rolls 3 for $3.15 (i think)

Supposedly their are buy one get one free coupons in phone books. And their are 2 $20 gift certificates for $20 on a website like citydeals.com (i don't think it is that one though)

Anyway...i would hate to see this place go out of business b/c of lack of word of mouth so i am putting my 2cents in. :) Good food! and i can't wait to go back!

I would love to know where anyone else goes for Asian Food.

If you've seen these books...

hey all! i have not been able to find these books at my house. i have a tendency to loan books out and forget who i have lent them too (or i cant find them in my mess of a home 'library') SO...

if i have lent you either of these books, could you call/text me and let me know :) (isnt this pathetic!!) i want to know if they are really lost and need replacing or not.

and i want to re-read them both. :)

i will be 15 weeks pregnant tomorrow and so far it has been quite the ride. totally and completely unlike my experience with Caleb. For all of you that get sick out their from being pregnant...my heart goes out to you! Fall--really cool fall--couldn't get here fast enough! I have had it with heat and summer!! And winter! even though i can't ski this year i can't wait for winter--Robs work will *hopefully* slow down and we can enjoy being a family more.

Thankfully Caleb is a gem of a child and right now is begging me to come and do dishes with him. Who would have thought mom was avoiding chores and the kid was trying to get mom to do them :) He is super helpful, loves to clean, help make the bed, unload the dishwasher (he gets in trouble for trying to do this alone) and cook. My son LOVES to cook with me. we have a blast making things together. He loves to stir, watch water boil, help make (and eat) bread and all kinds of other foods. Even though my mom, who had (and survived) crazy-destructo-twin boys said to me yesterday "i don't know how you do it, i have never seen a child so busy" i feel lucky to have him. Somehow he is a perfect fit for our family and he keeps me from being too lazy. Although Mom--yesterday on our way home he kept sighing and saying "tired"-- Now if we could quell the high-pitch screaming...

Great News!

Sorry i don't have any pictures but we are pregnant!!

We are thrilled! I am officially 10 weeks along-baby is due beginning of March and officially we only have one baby. We had an ultrasound this past monday to confirm this. I was pretty much a wreck all weekend. All i could foresee was me having to get a mini-van (no offence to mini-van drivers out their, this is a long time petty fear of mine) and going crazy as i tried to be a mother to three. As twins are part of my genetics and i am on fertility medication to get pregnant the concern is fairly substantial. We had the same scare/possibility/suspense-filled-time-period with Caleb too.

The only downside to this wonderful news is that i have been fairly sick which did not happen with Caleb. Thus the extra reason to be concerned...also, (tmi) my uterus is about twice the size of a normal woman at 10 weeks. I carry huge--Rob is comforted that the baby has plenty of space right now. He tends to worry about this-which i find so hilarious. To his brilliant science-oriented mind, it just doesnt jive that a being that started as a cell and grows in a single environment doesn't have any qualms with the alotted space. He just looks at me (he did this with caleb too) and at pictures of a baby in the womb and just shakes his head and feels bad. I find this so endearing.

This baby has taken us about 10 months to get and we are so thrilled. Caleb will be a wonderful big brother. He is a born helper and i think he is so ready for a sibling. He watches every baby he sees and at breakfast every morning, he reads a baby magazine we have--i can't tell you how cute this is. He loves to look at pictures of babies. when he kicks my belly i tell him he can't do that because their is a baby in there and he will say sorry and kiss my belly-adorable!!! Rob and i are appropriately excited and we also have our moments where we just look at each other and wonder "how will we do this?" Thankfully, being blind in experience to the oncoming challenges as parents of two, we can focus on being excited and happy and leave the worry for later. :)


Ps
Oh, i have a shameless plug for a brilliant book...
Dave Ramsey "total money makeover". Regardless of your financial situation it is a book that causes you to ask questions of yourself and be inspired to do better.

Old Farm Park

Well friends, this is the best find in a long time! It basically a free water park. Well, sorta. There aren't any slides--it is like the fountain at Gateway but better. It is in the middle of a neighborhood and there is a fishing pond next door. It is off Bangerter Highway and 2700 w. It is the first left after you get off bangerter--it pops up pretty quick! Drive through the neighborhood and keep you eye out for it--it sneaks up on ya. We went on saturday and half of the people were there for a party. their weren't very many!!

It might be fun to get together a group and go during the day. Schools out there are on year-round schedule so we might be able to get it when few people are there.

Shoutout for ideas & inspiration

hey everyone, my sister in law and i are redoing my kitchen cabinets. The frame of the cabinet is brown and the doors are red all with a black glaze and a satin finish. i am totally stoked about this!!!!--trust me--it looks so much better than it sounds.

BUT

I need ideas for backsplash.

I have seriously considered beadboard (no color picked out yet) however i read some opinions online saying it is an absolute pain to clean. Considering my love of cooking and my absolute detest of cleaning up my monumental messes that probably won't work for me.

Also, i love the look and ease of tile but i am not redoing the countertops yet and to redo countertops after tiling the walls would be a pain. I have dreams of making it all look like one with tile/granite backsplash and countertop--like i said...dreams. So this is an interim-type option.

so any ideas/experience you can share would be fabulous

2nd Birthday

We celebrated Caleb's
second birthday (woah!) on sunday with our families. Here are a few pics.

We loved having everyone over and the gifts for Caleb. He was asking for his bubble machine all day. Thanks again! We love you all

Story: Jail pics of the dog.

Every day when Rob comes home from work i ask him if he has any 'stories'. This is a long standing tradition dating back to when we first became friends ten years ago. So, today when Rob comes home, i will have a story for him. I dressed our dog in our son's clothes and made her pose for pictures. i should have put her in the red onsie however i didn't think about that till it was too late. Caleb thought this was the coolest thing ever and i am sure i will find him trying to dress gabby one day soon. All my crazy fun ideas are going to get me in trouble one day!

So for your viewing pleasure, the pictures that make my dog look like she just got arrested:

TV

Caleb has never really shown much interest in tv. sometimes something will catch his eye but his short attention span ends and he is onto the next thing.

Except Barney.

We have netflix and Rob found two episodes of Barney. So every night Rob and Caleb alternate between Lets pretend with barney and On the farm. We are both sick of these episodes so i found Barney on tv and am going to dvr it. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not.
But caleb loves barney! He dances, and stares at the computer screen enraptured. It is so dang cute and today it afforded me time to wash my face and brush my teeth uninterrupted. It was refreshing! So, in the realm of kids shows to watch-even though it is over-the-top cheesy-i guess this isn't that bad.

Overnight Change

Ok, i took these pictures b/c i was so excited that i finally have a nice church shirt for caleb and i thought he was so dang cute!





Then we got his hair cut today by my sister-in-law. I always thought he was cute but now...wow. He really looks like rob's kid! He also grew up. I am glad i delayed this day. I have love my little boy but now, he looks so much older-so much closer to Two than i would like him to be. :)















Ahh little boy, i love you so. Your dad is my sun and you are my moon. I could not exist completely without either of you.

Power to the women...

When i was in high school i was easily bated by guy friends just with them calling me "woman" with a certain tone. Those jokes about wives only cooking or having babies-those have always pissed me off. Without knowing anything about the feminist movement, i heartily counted myself as a fringe member. Power to the women baby--equality and all that stuff.

Well, I may be rethinking my stance. Don't get me wrong, i am all about fairness in the workplace and whatnot but there is a growing trend that either exposure or maturity has exposed me to. The paris hilton commercial for a Carl's Junior hamburger is mouth-dropping offensive (if you haven't seen it, count your blessings, it is pretty much soft porn) I mean seriously--this is an ad for HAMBURGERS?! Notice what all women's halloween costumes have in common: Sex appeal. It is halloween for heaven's sake! Can't i just dress up?! just be goofy-?

Here is the issue, with all of us girls seeing everything being sold with sexy women, we think that is what we need to be like. rediculous (kudos to you if you are immune to this. I however am a bit of a weakling)

It would seem that the only thing women have to offer is being eye-candy. Now, this is not a diatribe about normal women not being seen in advertising (that is for a different day); no, this diatribe is about over-sexualization of women in general.

Rob was telling me about an add someone put on his computer as a joke...a flier for a 900 number, on the back side manifested a Carl's Junior logo. Now, i don't really care about Carl's Junior, they seem to have ample choices for examples at this moment. When Rob told me about this, i got thinking and it hit me:

women are not empowered by their sexuality-they - WE- are objectified by it.

it is all such a lie. Amazing.

So, in the name of equal rights and all that crap, women are everywhere but the only way we are everywhere is if we are beautiful/sexy. i thought we just wanted to vote.

hmmm
Somehow i think somewhere something got screwed up.

Mind you, i am not against being sexy people, heck, i love to feel sexy (don't you?!) i am arguing that it is not my defining feature. something, somewhere got out of balance.

Not dead, i promise!

so i realize that i totally suck with blogging. So to spare you all my verbose tendencies, here are a bunch of pics to update you.

unfortunately the pics are in reverse order. lol
This is my pantry addition Rob made for me over christmas break. It probably adds almost double the amount of space. i am in heaven! and yes, the ladder situation was somewhat sketchy.
Chronological enjoyment of the 'first' shake with our new VitaMix (thanks mom and dad!!)






Ahhh bliss

Preparing for the adventure outside. K doesn't do very well keeping his gloves on so there are rubber bands around his wrists. dad's idea.
The christmas eve present (the tube) and first 'sledding trip'

Unfortunately i don't have any pics of our sledding hill. it is at the playground next door and this tube does great. the only down side is that it terrified caleb.


Tug-o-war with his friend Noah

Rob had to be on the watch with K. Caleb gets pretty excited with his friends and had a tendency to try to hug them but that usually means pulling, poking of eyes or holding on too long (do you remember those guys?!!) or some other disturbance of their personal space.
She just looked so content. :) i love my dog. even though she isn't exactly well socialized (my fault) she is a great play mate for caleb!
Ok. Caleb loves this. it looks like child abuse but i swear it isn't.
Going in
"Shut the door!"
Halloween. I am supposed to be a glamorous Hollywood movie star
Rob, the Construction Worker. yes, he has a fake earring. (not quite sure if you can see it).
My happy giraffe. He hated having the head on. I thought it completed the outfit so i forced the issue.
Dejected

Me at Walden Pond. I went to Boston in October and stayed with a friend. I am an english major so Walden Pond has much significance in my book. I studied writings of Henry David Thoreau for a semester; this was a highlight of my trip. Forgive the funky hair. I struggle with what to do with it when i am in humid conditions. :)

mullet head.
Learning to kiss
um.... (cracked me up after i took this!!)
Got it!

Fall family vacation to Park City. We 'illegally' took caleb down the Alpine Slide. He loved it! i couldn't go fast enough for him. He will end up just like his uncles: daredevils.
he was jumping/dancing on all the grates. so cute!

Looking at a statue with some animal(don't remember which) he recognized
Cute outfit

Mullet Baby
This is my first complete dinner failure. These are supposed to be beef ribs. I tried to follow my grandpa's advice on how to cook these however my grill was a cast off we found for free off the side of the road (please laugh, we do!) and it ignited these. To add fuel to the fire-literally-the ribs had a lot of fat on them so i had a bondfire. i actually had flames coming out of the bbq. This makes me laugh--i have never failed so completely with food and this...what a complete failing. so worth documenting, all b/c of a free bbq. haha
excited to color.
discovery of a pen. i was working and he was playing. obviously i was pretty focused on what i was doing.

All innocent. right