Peed In My Pants

Not just once, but twice.

Now that you are a pro and understand the emotions of a pregnant lady in her 9th month, it should not surprise you that on the same day I broke down and cried in my car at the doctor's office, I also peed my pants laughing hysterically.

We were at Sam & Megan's house visiting our friend, Chase who works in The Sudan but is visiting for a couple weeks. As Ethan and I were on our way out, I had my hand on the doorknob and thought "man, it would suck if I opened the door and got shot." I know that is probably not a normal thought to have, but nonetheless, I opened the door and our friend Chris Lawhorne was standing on their dark porch, wearing a beanie (much like all criminals do) and reaching for the doorknob. My throat still hurts I screamed so loud. And then I laughed. Then peed. And then peed again on the way home, thinking about the whole situation.

I would blame the pee on pregnancy, but I really can't. I kind of have a habit of laughing to the point of pee. So much so that my brother, Sam likes to make it his goal. One afternoon of his Christmas visit, he was successful. I was eating lunch at the table and he stood in the kitchen, danced, and sang Nelly's "Flap Your Wings (drop down and get your eagle on, girl)." I inappropriately misinterpreted the lyrics, much to Sam's disgust. I think I'm going to pee just thinking about it. Ask me sometime and I'll tell you what I thought it meant.

Doctor Visits

Ultrasounds are always fun, so my morning appointment was very enjoyable. Carver was confirmed a boy, determined to be 7 lbs, 6oz and as cute as a little smushed up fetus can be. The lady doing my ultrasound even let me see him in 4D which was super cool. I felt like I was cheating by seeing what he looks like. He has his dad's nose and hair!

My second visit was not so fun. Not only is having your cervix checked an unpleasant feeling, having the doctor say you are 0cm. dilated is even worse. However, both mom and baby are healthy so I'm thankful (or at least I feel like I should say that).

If you ever plan on getting pregnant or getting any one else pregnant, you might find the following helpful. These are the 4 extreme emotions I've been experiencing as the final weeks approach. The first two are the patient ones and the last two are desperately impatient ones.

1. I feel pleasantly distracted from pregnancy and can thoroughly enjoy things like Christmas, buying new plants at the nursery, or whatever else might come my way. (If you have such a ploy, please distract!)

2. Sometimes I'm just straight up content with waiting for my little guy. I think about how fun motherhood is going to be, sigh and realize I would wait forever to meet this person I love so much.

3. CRANKY. Angry, grumpy, inconsolable. I am literally sick and tired of being heavy, not sleeping, not knowing when I'm going to go into labor, saying "January 11th," breathing heavily just from walking up one flight of stairs and having fat feet. Every false contraction mocks me. My packed hospital bags mock me. Cute maternity clothes, baby gear and I have all lost our "glow."

4. Some of the time I just feel generally sad or disappointed. I've spent a year getting my hopes up and looking forward to a day that still seems so far away. Even 48 hours sounds far away. The last time I felt as disappointed as I did today after the 2nd appointment was on my birthday last April when I got my period (and therefore realized I wasn't pregnant).

Unless you've been 9 months pregnant before, all this might sound crazy, selfish or silly. I'm sure these next 2 weeks of your life will fly by. But to me, it is what it is.

My Prayer For Carver

A few months ago I asked God to give me a prayer for Carver. I didn't know if it would be scripture, or if I would just have a feeling of something to pray for, but I just felt a need for God's guidance. He led me to Psalm 20 and this has been and will be my prayer for our little boy:

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble!
May the name of the God of Jacob set you securely on high!
May He send you help from the sanctuary,
And support you from Zion!
May He remember all your meal offerings,
And find your burnt offering acceptable!

May He grant you your heart's desire,
And fulfill all your counsel!
We will sing for joy over your salvation,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners.
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.

Psalm 20:1-5

Good News

Not in the world of my uterus (which I have named Harvey, just for kicks), but in a few others'. Remember my blog about friends and family that were having trouble getting pregnant or having health issues? Well, the friends are preggers and the family just had a sweet baby boy! Hooray!

I do have an ultrasound and a cervix check today, so there will be news one way or another. Stay posted.

My wonderful mom and mom-in-law made sure all my dishes and laundry were done while they were here for Christmas, so my normal pastimes are out. What a relief! Other than that I have been doing some sewing(!), list-making of other things I could do to keep me busy, pacing in the middle of the night, the usual.

Next, I think I'll try and learn how to do this.

Only, it might end up more like this.

No News

...is good news? I did have a very painful contraction in the movie theatre last night. Then again, it could have been gas.

Double Fake Out

Merry Christmas! Even with all the excitement, present opening and food going on right now, I want to take a moment and go over what has happened in the world of my uterus in the past couple days (mostly for my own reflection).

On the morning after the first fake out, starting around 8:00, I had a few mild "contractions." I could tell it was insignificant because there were no patterns forming. Around 9:00, Megan and I met Cindy for breakfast at Panera, la di da, nothing going on... then at 11:00 I went to Publix to stock up on food for Christmas because Ethan's family was coming into town that day. As I walked around, enjoying my shopping, I realized I was starting to have pretty regular contractions. I decided to text Ethan and he told me to text him every time they came so he could keep a little record. I think around this time they were 8 minutes apart. Keep in mind I am still pretty comfortable to continue shopping, chatting it up with strangers who told me I "look like I could have him any moment" and am I "sure it isn't twins" (thanks, actually I'm trying to keep smiling and nodding at you while my utereus is crunching down on itself as we speak).

I decided to go home, leave all the groceries in the car that I could and go for a walk around the apartment area. I kept updating Ethan and by 2:00 I was having contractions consistently 5 minutes apart. This is throwing off my whole plan, see. Our childbirth instructor told us a simple rule on how to remember when its time to go to the hospital: 511 (or 311 if you live close by). That means contractions that are 5 minutes apart, lasting for one minute each for at least an hour. But these didn't feel like real labor contractions. So why were they so consistent? I decided to go upstairs and lay down to see what would happen. Now they're 4 minutes apart. So I walked again. Now its 3:00 and they're 3 minutes apart. Ethan suggested I call the nurse. She said if they kept up like that for 45 minutes, to come into labor and delivery.

Well now, I'm just getting excited. I go and pick E up from work, we stop by the house to get our bags and Sam (my brother who had just arrived for Christmas) and we drive to the hospital. I'm thinking if this is the real thing and I go ahead and check in, they're not going to let me back out. I'd rather walk around the pretty pond with all the Christmas lights than in the hospital halls, so we walk. Then I can't take it any more. By this time, the contractions are getting pretty uncomfortable and I want to know if I'm crazy, so we go into labor and delivery.

They took me into triage and hooked me up to 2 monitors, one for Carver's heart beat and one to measure contractions. The nurse said I was having beautiful contractions 3 minutes apart (I was relieved I wasn't making all this up) and that people would kill for a pattern like that. Carver was doing great and things seemed to be progressing, but I was trying not to get my hopes up. It just didn't feel painful enough. Sure enough, she checked my cervix and I wasn't dialated at all. She said I am about 50% effaced and she could feel Carver's head, but no dialation. She and the doctor on call suggested I go home, get some sleep and they would probably see me the next morning. That was Tuesday. Now its Thursday and besides a contraction here and there, I don't really have any news.

I was really dissapointed at first because, Lord, I just want to see my baby boy! But now I am trying to just go with the flow and hopefully this is all a sign that things will happen sooner than later.

Fake Out :(

At midnight last night (this morning?) I started having contractions about every 8-10 minutes. They stopped around 2:00 AM. No Carver yet.

More to come soon on why last night was still the best night ever.

Visuals, As Promised

Gainesville Shower

Melissa & Lauren

At the end of the shower all these wonderful ladies whom I love got in a circle and prayed for different aspects of C's life. I will never forget that tearful moment!

Pregnant "Core" ladies (my amazing friends from camp), Heather & Gwen

Sign Language Kiddies

Big kids, Miss Becca & Miss Jessica

Mrs. Valerie is looking big, as well

So cute

Fat Feet (can you believe these???)

My Newest Creation

The Kitchen Sink

I don't have much to write, just a little bit of everything.

The Christmas tree is up and dazzling, as are my 2 crafty decorations that I got from Real Simple. Carver's room is looking amazing, thanks to 40 dear friends and family that showered me last Sunday. I hope to prove all of this with visuals, but that's usually what turns a 15 minute blogging sesh into a frustrating hour and a half sesh, so I'm procrastinating on that adventure. Plus, I will have to really dig in audio-visually to post the video of the sign language performance! It was fabulous! There's one little first grade girl who does the motions opposite of everyone else. You'll see. The performance concluded an 11 hour work day as well as work as I know it. I am so sad to leave my kids and all the sweet people at Idylwild. I really loved working there and I'm sure I'll be back now and then.

Here are some things I'm looking forward to when Cman is my work:
Playing with him outside
Showing him off as I run errands
Reading to him
Breastfeeding
Visiting his daddy at work
Being able to plan and cook dinner
Making his baby food (thanks to Ronda and Emilye who gave me a baby food maker and Mrs. Sweet Dreams who made me a recipe book!)
Hanging out with other moms
Waking up early for the Mr. Rodgers feeling

Hopefully it won't be too long. I have 3 more weeks, but he sure feels ready. My doctor told me that as of Tuesday he was measuring at 7.5 lbs! I know they can be way off, but I also know this is no small child. I've really enjoyed being pregnant, but it gets very uncomfortable at the end! I can't wait to take a full breath without having to brace myself first.

I also can't wait to:
Longboard
Mountain bike
Roll over in bed without thinking "Is this really going to be worth it?"
Play Frisbee
See bones in my feet
Have ankles
Give frontal hugs
Pee for longer than 10 seconds at a time

I don't know how long it will take to be able to do all of those, but I'll let you know. And although 3rd trimester hormones have caused my brain and tear ducts to do crazy things, in general, pregnancy is pretty delightful. I've mostly felt full of energy, talkative and extremely happy. If nothing else, it forces a sense of humor. Last night at Moe's I had to stick one leg under the arm rest of my chair just to be able to spread my legs out enough for my belly to fall between them.

My Apartment Has a Sense of Humor

Get it? Like it was that cold?

I Would Rather Work With Kids Than People

That's what I said to E this morning in the car. I also couldn't remember the word "bottle" yesterday. This is what pregnancy does to a mind.

It is true, I would rather work with kids than people, at least the grown-up kind. And that's said after a week of being a Kindergarten teacher (which I realized I could never do long-term). And that's said after being moved from the Kindergarten portable classroom we were in to the library because of a tornado watch. You try to keep 20 five year olds quiet without games, scissors and glue for six hours and tell me how it goes. The librarian was sweet and gave me chocolate at the end of the day. Despite the noise, the incessant tattle-telling (my pet peeve!) and constant taps on my belly, I am already missing my kids so much. With a month left until my due date, I can't believe I only have one more week at school with them until Christmas break and then full-time momhood.

My favorite part of work this week was in afterschool. I decided to lead a face-painting activity as part of our theme for the month: circus. It was a very complicated activity. I painted the kids' faces. Because of artistic and time-related limits, I only gave them a few choices: heart, star, rainbow, butterfly, alligator, clown, or peace sign. When I told one sweet Kindergarten girl her choices I thought she could only remembered the last one I listed and therefore requested the peace sign. Turns out she wasn't saying "peace sign," but "Capri Sun." This lead to quite the conversation. "Seriously, you want a drink pouch on your face? A Capri Sun?" Yep. Guess what the next person in line also asked for.

Yesterday afternoon my sign language group painted T-shirts for their performance next Thursday. I'm so excited! I hope I can figure out how to post videos on this thing so you can see it. Its the best combination of cute and hilarious. After we made the shirts, I was cleaning up when I dropped a bottle of paint on the floor. NBD, but as it was rolling away, I squatted to pick it up. BD. It all happened in slow motion. I realized that squatting (with my hands full) seriously compromised my sense of balance and as I leaned forward and the bottle kept rolling away I did a little less falling and a little more sprawling across the floor. Picture a newborn elephant trying to find her footing, yet all four limbs end up as far apart as possible. I wasn't concerned for my safety as I was at an elevation of about 6 inches, however, I was concerned for the amount of butt crack the kids behind me saw. Good thing you can blame just about everything on pregnancy.

Recap

As Double Layer Dan would say, "whoa whoa whoa."
As Ethan would say, "Its a crazy life... but its our life." (Yes, that's a quote from the intro to Jon & Kate Plus 8, my 3rd favorite TV show- and apparently Ethan's)
As I would say:

Its been a hectic couple weeks. I just looked and this will be the first legit blog in December! Holy cow! I'm sorry its been so long and I'm sorry that I have this weird need to keep things in order. Let me just fill you in on Nov 27-now and then I will feel better and we will move on to blogs of my funny everyday life.

Thanksgiving was great. We went to Tampa and cooked and ate at Dad's. He has this cool tennis set-up that the boys played with. The best and most ironic part of our holiday was that night. What else would any American family do to celebrate the 1st meal between the pilgrims and Native Americans? Go to the Seminole Indian Casino. On Thanksgiving. I was up $20 at one point, but lets be real, does it ever stay that way?

The next day we went to Busch Gardens with Mom. To me, Busch Gardens is like the North Pole (or some other really cool place, like the foam pit at a gymnastics gym).

This one perfectly captures my siblings.

This one perfectly defines their relationship. Oh, brother.

Let's see, what else? I don't want to skip anything important.

Obviously, UF beat FSU.

We had a little scare with Tug (my sister's dog in the pictures above). He got lost, but found. Once was blind, but now he sees.

We came back home for a busy week of work, more childbirth class, a class on car seat safety, Mary & Steve's garage sale, a work party, the SEC championship (!!!), and on Sunday night we drove back down to Tampa for a wedding. Phew.

I'm sure the bride and groom had a crazier week that I did, though, because there were over 600 guests! It was a very beautiful wedding. Our friend from Young Life, Dara married professional baseball player (and former Gator) Matt LaPorta.

Thanks to my new bed time, this week has been quiet and relaxing. It takes a lot of self-control for me to turn off all my random ideas, creative juices and urges to clean by 10:00, but it was well worth it. I don't want to be caught off guard and go into labor on less than enough sleep. I basically just worked every day, came home, ate and slept. We did have our last childbirth class which was very exciting, yet sad. I know we will remember going and think about how young we were. I feel so confident about labor now, I highly suggest taking classes if you plan on pushing a baby out of your body. If you're in the area, I suggest taking them with Tina Copeland at North Florida.

I don't even care if you read this or not, I finally feel much better after taking the time to sit outside in this amazing Friday weather and literarily sigh out the past 15 days.

As Anne would say, "Thank you and goodbye."

Ode To My Baby

I've never been so exhausted and so excited at the same time.

To my readers:
I'll be back after a couple days of implementing my new rule: 10:00 bed time.

CRIB!!!

I don't want to embarrass them, so I won't name names... but some really cool people who Carver is inheriting his middle name from got us the most kick-ass crib ever!!! My hot husband set it up last night.

While I, so helpfully assisted by taking these:

See the hormone line? Its been creeping up there for a week or two. Also, please note how my belly button is off-center, but still not an outie. I think, with only 6 weeks to go, I'll always be an innie.

Alright, now that I've already done 2 of my favorite things this morning (nap and blog), time for my third, clean!

Also, some amazingly sweet friends happen to be faithful blog readers. They read my blog about the difficulties of pregnancy and nail-clipping and bought me a pedicure! If I clean and pack for Tampa fast enough, I think I will go cash that in. Again with the name-naming, I don't want to embarass you, but you know who you are and I love you!

Fun With Mascots

Saturday we went to the Gator game. The weather was beautiful and of course, we kicked butt. So much so, that it was really more fun to be there to hang out with friends and enjoy the traditions from the 1st row than it was to actually watch the game. I guess that was the last game I will attend preggy for a while. We do have the SEC and hopefully the BCS championships to look forward to, but unless you want to give us tickets to the SEC championship, we won't be there. The BCS is January 8th! Sounds coincidentally close to somebody's due date! I don't know if you were aware of this, but I happen to be very good luck for the Gators. The day Ethan proposed we beat FSU. On my birthday (2 years in a row!), we won the basketball championship. I'm just saying, don't be surprised if Carver is born on January 8th, the day the Gators win the national football championship (again).

Natalie came with us to the game and it was some good, classic sister time. We made it our goal to get pictures with the mascots (The Citadel's mascot is a really cute bulldog). I guess it was our day.

Here are a few other gems:

After the game, Ethan and I decided to have a long-needed date. I have been freaking out (just a little) about the fact that it will never be just the two of us again (insert Will Smith song here). My favorite thing about our marriage is that we make such good best friends. When E and I first started hanging out, we said we would never date because we were too much like brother and sister. We had picnics every week together and called it platonic. Now we have the same tease each other, tell each other everything, play scrabble like old people and act stupid together friendship, we just call it marriage. Carver has already added so much excitement and depth to our relationship and I know he will only cause us to fall even more in love with each other, I'm just nervous about having less time together. I know its not an if, its a when, I just pray God gives us grace to balance our life.

Ok, now that I've made me cry, I was just trying to say we went to Macaroni Grill for dindin. We had such a wonderful time, mostly talking about McCarverton and how we would do anything for him. The two examples Ethan gave were sacrifice a limb and move to Alaska. I thought that was funny. It ended up taking a long time for our food to come out, which I didn't mind, but they gave us our meal for free! Mind you, we had run into a friend that morning at Mi Apa who sneakily paid for our breakfast! See, God's already giving us free dates together.

SKAL Night!

I feel like its been so long! Maybe that's because today feels like the weekend already. Anywho, to catch you up on my social life and last weekend, I will start this series of blogs with our Young Life ladies' night (to find out what SKAL stands for, you have to attend).

It was awesome. Current leaders got to meet our amazing group of leaders-in-training and we all got to bond and look cute and be funny together. Plus, now that we played the best friend game, we're all best friends. I really just could not be more excited about this group of college students that is about to be placed on Gainesville YL teams. They are super fun to be around, excited about life and about introducing high schoolers to Jesus Christ. As Ethan pointed out the other day, by the time they are our age, our son will be in 1st grade. Scary. Nonetheless, I know we have formed some lasting friendships and I can't wait to see the ladies grow over the next few years!

We had everyone dress up for a very fancy progressive dinner of MOES, Chick-Fil-A, then TCBY. Then we came back to my place to decorate socks for ROLLER SKATING! Woowoo! If I told you about the rest of our night, I'd have to kill you, so I better not. See for yourself:

One Last Thought (for now)

I guess I should have added "mess around online" to my list of things to-to because that seems to be my biggest time-slurper.

It was well worth it, though, cause look what I found! Beautiful! If you are Santa, please consider this my Christmas list.

Time In a Bottle

I hate that commercial! You know the one I'm talking about? Its for Zyrtec and the lady starts off by saying "You know that song, 'Time in a Bottle?'" No. No, I don't. I know 'Genie in a Bottle' and I could even do a cool little dance to it that we made up in 8th grade. Anyhow, I think its a stupid saying, and the commercial is even worse. I was looking for it on You Tube in case you haven't seen it, but I couldn't find it. That's even better, because now you don't have to watch it. I found this funny kid's parody of it instead.

I get where the concept comes from, though. I never seem to have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do. I know, I know, I could stop blogging and start doing, but this is one of the things I want to do. These are all the other things I want to do in the next hour and a half before I have to leave for work: make banana bread, fold the laundry, clean the house, make more necklaces, have quiet time with God, pay bills.

I think all this is why I have grown to love the mornings so much. I haven't always (ever, really) been a morning person. Just ask my parents or my college roommates. However, it is so nice to have a reason to get up on a morning I might otherwise sleep in. Its like a head-start. For example, this morning after I dropped Ethan off at work at 8:00, I went to Starbucks, got a hot chai (for free!) to warm me up (it was 25 degrees in Gainesville last night!) and sat and wrote my grocery list. Chicken enchiladas for dinner tonight. All this happened when I could have just been drooling in bed, suffering from leg cramps.

I think it might be from watching too many episodes of Mr. Rodgers growing up (Mom didn't believe in cable, which I am thankful for), but I just love sitting around, enjoying watching the world function, seeing police officers and business men and people listening to iPods read newspapers and drink their coffee. The one weird part of my scene at Starbucks was the couple listening to iPods. They had a stick of lady's deodorant just sitting out on the table along with their steamy cups. Hmm. Besides that, the rest of my morning was very Mr. Rodgers. At Publix, the only other customer was a man in a tie who bought $40 worth of food to give to a local charity. That's a lot of food when most of it is boxes of mac & cheese for fifty cents. To top it all off, I even had a conversation with the man who collects quarters out of the laundry machine. This was exciting, because for a couple weeks now I had a theory that they collected the quarters on Wednesdays. My quarters always make such a lonely sound when I drop them in, and finally my theory was confirmed! I think the guy thought I was a little weird.

This is all to say two things. One, I love the mornings because everything seems so calm and friendly, especially running errands. Two, I feel like there is no limit on what I can accomplish when I have the whole day ahead of me.

The funniest part of my priority sorting is things that should be on the "have to" list end up on the "get around to it when you can list." These things usually include eating and showering and usually get replaced by watering the house plants, window-shopping for my dream living room on IKEA, or alphabetizing our DVD collection. I can't decide if that makes me sound more like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets or Phoebe from Friends. Unfortunately, its already 11:00, so I better go pick two things off my list.

Shop's Open!!!

Yay! After days of neglecting my blog to sew necklaces, take pictures of them and post them on Etsy, I'm in business! I have been wearing a few of them out and about and have received lots of comments. They are way cuter in person, so hopefully I can sell some that way. I am going to try and set up a link right here -->

I cannot let you leave without telling you about the name suggestions I got from a kid today. This is the girl who told me she would love to be my daughter. I used to think of her as a handful, but she has been growing on me a lot. Just to remind you a little bit about her, she has bouncy blond curls and a slight speech impediment. This is what she said:
"So...Mrs. Valerie, what are you going to name your baby again?"
"Carver."
"Well, how about something different, like Bryan... or Max? Or maybe something French sounding like... (she pauses to think really hard) Freddy?"
Only it sounds like "Fweddy."

3rd Wear's A Charm

If you don't remember my other 2 red dress adventures, click here to read the blog.

Last Saturday was my 3rd and favorite occasion in this dress. One of the best friends anyone could ask for, Melissa and her mom threw me a baby shower in Tampa. It was so much fun! A lot of my friends from high school were there. These aren't normal high school friends. Most of us have been friends since middle school (some, elementary) and have remained very close ever since. I always laugh when I think about what an odd group we are. If we all met for the first time now, I don't know that any lasting friendships would be formed. However, because of our experiences together and how well we know each other, these strong friendships have become irreplaceable. The funny thing is all of our moms are friends too. This might be part of the glue that holds us together. So with all the friends, moms and family present, we did some baby-food guessing, some belly-feeling and a lot of oohing at cute boy clothes. Here are some shots from the weekend:

High School Pals

Me & Melissa

Lots of gifts!

My aunt Mary made this beautiful blanket

The sis

Now sandwiched by Aunt Mary & Mom

Tug

Beth Ann test-tasting

Carver, Ethan and I received many wonderful gifts! I am blown away by how many people are excited about this baby and want to welcome him into the world with cute clothes, gear, furniture, toys, baby announcements and diapers. I loved all my gifts, but here are some of the more photogenic ones:

Ethan trying on the baby wrap like a Ninja

And here's what his room looks like since we've come back to Gville and unpacked the lot:

Here's our living room, currently. Ahh!!!

We are trying to make space by getting rid of the bookshelf and entertainment center, so the floor has become temporary storage for books, picture frames, bull figurines, basketballs signed by Joakim Noah, harmonicas and anything else that you might want to display if you are us.

To update you on my life, my career and my thoughts, I am keeping my options open. I updated my profile on enannysource.com. I figure it can't hurt. I am also leaving the craft path open. I am creating an etsy shop. I will let you know when my doors open...get excited!