4.30.2010

bump a lump

continuing on the long list of things i am really happy about (rainbows!) is a tiny baby update. we had our 11 week appointment this week and i conned my awesome doc into giving us another ultrasound cause that first, intimate, one at 7 weeks is just blobtastic and not very touching (besides, you know, vaginally) and because jesse wasn't even there and didn't get to see the heartbeat or blob.


holy what a difference 4 weeks makes. little thing is laid back with arms behind head just chilling in the crook of my uterus. "wish you were here!"

mr./miss little bit was in there going to town on the recumbent bike. this picture actually sucks; there was so much arm and leg and head and face and nose clarity on the screen before the printout. it was breathtaking and totally looked like a baby (not a seamonkey/tampon as pictured above). i only had the 8 week and then 16/20 week ultrasound with judah so i had only ever seen tiny amoeba and huge taking-up-the-entire-uterus babies. this was so amazing to see tiny ping pong sized yet seriously human looking baby twirling around in there (probably trying to work off the krystal and mcdonalds i have been shoving at it).

one HILARIOUS and tragic thing happened at the appointment. our doctor (kind of spacey but 100% beloved) was asking me how i was feeling while she was looking at my chart on the computer in the room. i said, "well i feel like total crap" and she responded with, "are you sure you want to continue?" i was like, "ummm, yeah i think i'll, you know, hang in there and not throw in the towel yet...and what the hell kind of place is THIS that that gets offered at the first complaint!?!?!" then we all realized she was just reading aloud an error message that had popped up on the screen. shwew.


i call this one "an ode to having captain d's for lunch for 5 DAYS IN A ROW, you fatass"
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apparently publix hates women in their 10th and 11th weeks of pregnancy because they don't sell kumquats or figs. so i read about the actual dimensions of baby and decided this strawberry is a good approximation. can you farking believe that human shaped thing in the ultrasound flailing around all baby-like is only as big as a strawberry!?!?!? what a world, people.
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p.s. is it just because it's friday? because the turnout on the easiest giveaway ever is pretty sad. i am having a self-esteem crafting-shame moment.

giveaway 70

yikes oh smikes i am so behind on the giveaways. there are still 4 more that i owe y'all after this one. let's see how caught up i can get in this next week.

this one is a celebration of the fact that i have sewn nothing in about 6 weeks. thank god i am not a frontier mama and my gestating babe's wardrobe doesn't rely on how much i can weave, knit and sew before he/she arrives.

now, there isn't much selection, but how about you can have anything you want in my etsy shop. ha. sorry if you're not into jewelry rolls or yoga, that's all i got going on right now.

to enter:

-leave a comment with which item you'd want. and maybe why you think my marriage is going to last after all. one entry per person.

-one bonus entry if you become a follower (leave a SEPARATE comment saying you are now a homie of judah)

i'll randomly pick a comment as the winner on tuesday afternnoon. straight up.

4.29.2010

how dedicated?

in a not remotely startling turn of events, i got nothing, y'all. this time it's not (just) because of the pregnancy sickness. jesse and i are in the epic kind of marital fight where i would rather rip my own ears off than talk for one more effing second about feelings and conflict resolution and communication and whatever the hell it is we are even arguing about. we are both at frustration level defcon 5 red and just need it to be over before i pile drive my own head into the crawlspace.

so i'll continue the april blog mediocrity with some more "here's what we did" nonsense.

this one's actually cool. we did judah's baby dedication at church on sunday. this is not infant baptism. this is where we stand up and make a commitment to be his primary faith-trainers. the church commits to walk with us in this and pray for us as we go, but it's me and jesse saying, okay, it's on us. it was extra cool because we had 4 out of five of judah's sets of parents (regular, grand and god) on hand. lukas and danielle get a bye because they are working at jesus' corporate office (the mission field) in chile and we know they pray for him all the time and are all about committing to support us in raising him to be like jesus.

hopefully judah hasn't been listening the last few days during our little hateapalooza because, damn we are so dropping the ball on that whole baby dedication thing right out of the gate. see, the whole catch to being his "primary faith-trainers" pretty much means. not teaching him bible stories or telling him about faith, but modeling jesus' love for him EVERY DAY by acting like jesus. it's an immersion program. crappppppp. can't i just tell him about jonah and the whale and be a bitch instead!?!?!
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also we bought him a really cute suit for the occasion. thank god easter was before this because, hello clearance.


ten bucks says lena would detag this and regrets not standing at an angle. but its 100% presh and i'll never give it up. judah ADORES these two.

the elusive grandvincents caught on film (and in public with people!)

granddukes after a massive all-parental meal at longhorn. nothing says "i'm dedicated to my baby" like salmon and flo's filet


pre-dedication. judah's mouth was full of goldfish the entire time. my wan level is at all time highs because this was right before the death flu took complete hold on me. oh, and because i am paler than Powder (without the magnetic powers)

happy times ahead, i'm just so sure of it. please don't give up on me for turning into a raging harpy of complaints and rainclouds....i promise i love my life and my son and my fetus and my pets and my job and my natural gas provider and the crystal springs delivery guy at work, and okay fine, i guess my freaking ass husband too. i will adjust my butt to shoot shiny gamma rainbows first thing tomorrow.

p.s. the housing credit ends tomorrow and those momo fofo's who supposedly liked the house never came back. here's hoping they just don't care about the $8000 and will still buy it.

4.28.2010

bettertimes

here is some cuteness to buoy the old spirits. we definitely don't have anything to complain about, even when times are stressful.

just because it says chick-fil-a on it doesn't mean you need to eat it, baby goat


jesse needed to reach behind the washer with his good arm so he needed a convenient place to put judah

and because we don't know when enough is enough...he went in the dryer too


tiniest of groupies. back in the days when jesse could hold a guitar...tear.


oh man did he think this was funny

badtimes

super sorry town for going missing for almost a whole week. it has not been funtimes around our house. i won't go into crazy depressing details but here's a quick summary:

1. jesse dislocated his shoulder for about the 8th time since i have known him on sunday night while playing basketball with his youth boys. this landed him in the ER from 8pm until 2 am. i went to be with him while judah's great aunt jo came and stayed with him. they tried unsuccessfully over a few hours to yank the shoulder back in while jesse wasn't fully sedated and it was NOT fun to watch or hear. they finally gave him enough sedation for a 400 lb man and got 4 people to pull it back into socket while i waited in the hall and listened to jesse's unconscious groans. we have decided this is probably enough and we need to get him surgery. the only reason it hasn't happened already is because he had surgery way back when it first happened and the dislocations seem to have been worse since then. we want to make sure that nothing is stopping jesse from being able to hold 2 babies come november.



2. what had been a pretty bad cold i was fighting turned into full blown death flu for me thanks to being out so late that night. by the time they came to discharge him, we were both pathetically curled up in his hospital bed just wanting them to pull the plug. i am just now up to a functionality that includes wearing a bra and brushing my teeth.


3. the people who sent me and lena into full blown panic cleaning fest actually REALLY liked the house and said it was pretty much between us and one other house (with ours being pricier). they wanted to come see it again with their parents and after talking to their lender. so, in the midst of the sickness and the balls being out of their sockets, every time we left the effing house we had to clean it up spotless. so of course they never came. this was emotional warfare. as our awesome realtor says, "buyer are liars." but we called their agent and asked what was up and it turns out they just have crazy work schedules and are going to come today or tomorrow. yikes. cutting it close for the homebuyer credit. so the incessant cleaning continues. i hope they don't mind garbage cans full of kleenex filled with mutagen ooze.


4. and the absolute worst thing that makes all this other stuff really just laughable (and has made blogging just not a priority) is that one of jesse's former youth kids (because he had graduated HS) took his life on sunday night in his parents' driveway. i mean, i don't even have words to follow up on that. he was 19 years old and must have been hurting way more than anyone knew. if you are the praying type, please seriously send some up for his family.
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i am gonna try to do a few posts in the next 2 days to catch everything else up. just know that we are a little banged up here in dukesville.

4.22.2010

sprint. spent.

you're probably still reeling from the madcap funfest that was jesse's blog post yesterday. sorry if it's just too much excitement for you. jokes, i love talking about church conferences. no i hate that. i do love jesus, but i am bitter about jesse being gone. why? well let's see if you can figure it out. i'm going to revisit the last 20 or so hours of my life. join me, won't you?

3:00 pm-pick judah up from babysitter where he is staying after preschool while daddy is out of town. gleefully realize that lena will be at my house when i get home to help me with him so that may sleep and vomit in peace.

3:13 pm-receive text from lena indicating she has just read the blog and remembered jesse is gone. she has forgotten about me and judah.

3:14 pm-i deftly execute a killer text guilt-trip to impel lena to still come down and bring me taco bell as penance.

4:00 pm- lena and tacos arrive. faces are stuffed.

5:00 pm- judah wakes up from a nap that strangely began with full out blood-curdling screams before he just abruptly dropped right off to dreamland. lena takes him for a walk. i go to bed.

6:09 pm- i wake up in raging pain because my quesadilla has decided to go through puberty in my stomach and grow to at least 3 times its original size. it hurts. make it stop.

7:04 pm-i put judah down after a nice long bath that was for the first free from tub-poop fear thanks to our stock of lil' swimmers pool diapers (judah in the tub with a diaper on=weird. not cleaning up soggy turds after a bath=awesome). i tell lena she totally doesn't need to spend the night because once he's down he's really easy. lena decides to order a pizza before heading home (since she for some reason didn't eat dinner at 4 pm like i did. i am still in actual pain from the speed at which i ate taco bell and her recitation of her toppings brings the bile way up to the tippy top of my esophagus.

8:03 pm- just as we are sitting around bored and watching american idol i happen to stumble onto facebook where a message from my realtor is waiting: she couldn't get ahold of jesse and doesn't have my number, we have a showing scheduled for tomorrow (thursday) at 6:30 pm. quickly realizing that thursday is my day to work until 6 and jesse won't be home from orlando until 8, it hits me that that means i have to have the entire house cleaned and ready to impress (aka just not repulse) the visitors when we leave in the morning. at this point the house is a cheerio-encrusted dust bomb and the yard is totally jumanji.

8:05 pm-i retract lena's option of going home and tell her she is now required to spend the night and help clean my house. we spring immediately into action. first up: the lawn. light is failing and we can't start the lawnmower. over to the next door neighbors to borrow theirs (luckily they don't answer the door with a gun like they usually do after dark). rather than loaning us the mower, our sweet neighbor saddles up and proceeds to mow our entire lawn herself because it's not safe for me to bounce around on a lawnmower with a baby in my stomach. you say baby, i say tacos...whatever.

8:16- lena and i tackle the pollen-drenched patio with the hose and the backyard flora with the weedwacker. meanwhile the 14 year old boy scout son of the neighbor is soliciting more aid, asking if he can go inside and dust or fold our laundry (whaaaa?) he hilariously keeps calling lena "elena" and asking me for double A batteries. how is this helping us, justin!!?!?!


the picture of TRUE friendship, people

8:20 pm- the neighbor lady has stopped the mower out front and i go see what's going on. she says, "i ran over your paper." i look streetwards, and what do you know, she did. it looks like a very short parade just came through. luckily all the confetti is on the opposite side of the street. out of my jurisdiction. somehow this is not an issue to me at all and we have a good laugh.


9:07 pm- it is full dark and we have done everything we can for the outdoors. me and lena (no justin, i don't need you help clean the hair out of my brush) head inside and do the rest of the house. lena was amazing and offered to do the grossest of jobs. but even with full blown nausea my pride kept her at bay from the scary jobs such as cleaning around my toilet. waiting for me: a whole first trimester's worth of little barfy splatters that i never really noticed. freaking disgusting. how do i live like this!?!?!?

10:30 pm- finally they stop charitying around and kick someone off american idol. oh, and we are totally finished. the house looks awesome and we have left ourselves no work for the morning. goodnight lena, by the way, you have judah's nighttime feeding.

6:45 am today- i wake up and realize i am geting a cold and feel like double ass (fitting since that's what's growing in my jeans right now). awesome. i do the final prep for the house-opening blinds, last minute tidying, etc. and as i am opening the front blinds i see the reality of the lawnmowered newspaper. my yard, the street and our across the street neighbors' (not the ones who helped, but a scary family of about 16 rednecks who put up 10 of those inflatable christmas air statues every year) yard are covered and look like absolute crap. i realize i have to clean this up because it is bordering on vandalism.

7:00 am-i get our leaf sucker/mulcher bag out there with our 2 extension cords and get ready to suck it all away. the cord makes it to almost 2 inches from the nearest paper scraps and then runs out of length. i am about to cry. i wave to the kids waiting for their bus and possibly scar them for life since my sweet chariots have swung low right out of my $6 pregnancy bra from ross: delta burke collection. let me tell you, what those women were designing up in that sugarbaker house, i don't know, but it sure wasn't sturdy intimates, y'all.

7:03 am- i decide to try to pick it up by hand. you should know wet paper is pretty much my most hated textile/fiber on the planet earth. the scraps were all soaked with juicy morning dew. sick and sick and sick. this did present me the opportunity to pick up the natty light can one of our amazing fellow townsfolk had so sweetly thrown under our for sale sign since in attempt to tell us, :don't go, we'll miss you!" (it was half full!...who says i'm not an optimist?).

7:04 am- after about 3 handfuls i realize that this will take years to do by hand. i contemplate going into the fetal position in our ditch and letting things play out from there.

7:15 am- i wake up judah and lena. somehow judah somehow has literlly NOTHING remotely appropriate to wear despite drawers jam-packed with clothing. all we can find are long sleeved things and 6 month sizes despite the fact that all of his laundry is done.

7:17 am- we decide on a 12 month onesie lena recently bought him. its way too big but i don't care. the last snap refuses to close. it pops out in our faces every time we try to snap it. i cancel his pants for the day and decide he gets a onesie and 2 snaps because that's just the kind of day it's been.

7:23 am- out the door and on the road after a big sweaty goodbye to lena who has literally saved my life. i call father in law dukes in panic and beg him to come over to my house while i am at work and bring another extension cord and suck up the paper for me. god bless him, he says yes.

7:49 am- i drop judah off at the dukes house and give grandaddy the garage door opener so he can get in to our mulcher-sucker. i head off to work so relieved that i took care of the whole situation because, in hindsight, it would have been really not cool to totally trash our across the street neighbors' yard and then not clean it up. shwew.

10:47 am- i am taking a nap in the conference room as i normally do when i feel like death at work. since i am fat and pregnant i have undone my belt and jean-buttons so i can let 'er hang. all of a sudden my father in law comes in. i pop up immediately because it's kind of embarrassing to have your in-laws find you under a blanket at work. i look down and realize my freaking pants are hanging open. i try to smoothly hide my lower half behind an office chair while talking to bob. there's a 1 in 10 chance he didn't notice and think some freaking shit was going on in the conference room between me and my "percy jackson and the sea of monsters" book.

10:49 am- me: "thank you so so so so much, i cannot tell you how much i appreciate you." bob: "yeah i blew out your garage and the driveway and got all the paper up." me: "wow you are amazing, so you got all the stuff that was across the street in the neighbor's yard? i was totally freaking out about how rude we were to have left that there." bob: "oh, no i didn't do that. they were out in the yard doing stuff so i figured it had been them who ran over the paper last night and that they would clean up their yard." me: (dies a thousand deaths inside) "oh that's okay, no big deal. thank you so much."

11:07 am- i ponder what it must have been like for our redneck neighbors to wake up, see the huge mess in their yard emanating from our driveway, see me leave for work without talking to them or leaving a note or cleaning it up, THEN to see another person come over with extra cords so that the leaf-sucker can reach and to surely clean up the mess the awful dukes neighbors made only to see him stop the cleanup effort at to the street and the culprit's yard, leaving mine totally disgusting.

11:09 am- panic sets in. the rednecks are going to raze my entire house (bad) and eat my dogs (neutral).

11:10 am-i leave work, jump in my car, speed home, stop and buy another extension cord (since bob would have taken his extra one back) and pull up to see my pristine house directly opposite their AJC-sprayed landfill of a yard. i run up to the first person i see and spew out my pathetic story followed by LOTS of apologies telling him i am here to make it all right. neighbor dude whose debt i am greatly in: "huh?...oh, that's okay. hey, has the mailman come today yet?" me: "seriously!?!?!?!?! i thought country folk were passionate about their yards...i mean what if paper had gotten in the massive pontoon boat that you store out front or one of your decorative air characters' intake valves had gotten clogged by particles of this week's "parade" magazine?!?!?" i seriously don't think he noticed anything was even different. cue me hating myself for having a conscious.

11:12 to high noon- hard labor involving me with 4 extension cords--thank god bob had left his because it took his plus our first two plus the one i bought on the way home just to reach all the way from our living room to their yard (why the hell did we not get a gas powered one!?!?!?!)--sucking bits of the SUNDAY PAPER up on eat a time. i notice that a surprising number of coupons were actually quite accurately cut by the lawnmower, but then the thought of couponing makes me come really close to desecrating their lawn some more.

12:03 pm- wind up about 200 feet of dirty extension cord, smacking myself in the crotch bone an inordinate number of times. notice about 5 other things that i could do to make the inside of the house look better. reapply deodorant, change clothes, cry, pray to jesus in our empty living room that somehow this first ever family to see our house will for some reason decide to buy it today, because so help me, i CANNOT do this over and over again.

yeah, little drooly-dirty paws, go ahead and touch it all you want. i'll just windex that daily until the housing market takes off again.

4.21.2010

From O-town

Hello all, Daddy Dukes is dialing this one in from The Exponential Conference in Orlando, FL. Exponential is a network of church planters and the conference is all about planting churches. I'm currently having lunch with the rarely seen but greatly loved Rob Hartley who is a fellow blog husband like me. His wife Danielle has a lovely blog called Lancaster Living, which chronicles their journey which has included micro-financing in Rwanda, contemplating Amishnish, and now exploring church planting. You should definitely check it out. It's smooth like American Honey.

Anyway, in honor of Rob's endevor and this conference, I'll give you what church would look like if I planted one:

1. Learning to become like Jesus

YAWN, you probably read that and think boooring. Doesn't every church already do that? Well maybe they have that idea somewhere in there, but practically the goal of most churches is to get people to attend church and try to teach them, albeit terribly. Imagine a school that taught like church. Classes once or twice a week, for an hour, or less. No tests, no measurable goals, several sentences of required reading, optional homework and no grading system. Sounds like Clayton County schools. This is because for most churches there is no end in sight, no real goal or measure of success beyond staying open. Self preservation. The big problem with that is the guy we claim to follow sucked at self preservation. Jesus was always making terrible career decisions, killing momentum and bucking conventional wisdom. But the crazy part is when things died around him, they came back to life. So I want to see what a church looks like that takes serious the commission to actually become like Jesus and puts in the time and effort to measure if it's actually happening, rather than just if people are attending.

So that's #1 and I'll keep posting as the day goes on, but what about you guys, anyone tired of church as is?


-- Post From My iPhone

4.19.2010

fun in the sun

we had a reeeeeeeally unexpectedly fun saturday. unexpected because i amazingly didn't punk out when it came time to wake up at 7:30 am on a saturday and drive for over an hour to get to our destination. jesse had signed up to play in this big dodgeball tournament on a team of some of his BFF's where the top prize was free chick-fil-a for a year. (now you understand why i was on board.)

when i think dodgeball i think, "hmm, never in my life have i played dodgeball outdoors so clearly i will wear jeans and don't need to shave my legs and also i will wear a cardigan in case the AC is up really high in the gym" wrong. outdoor tournament in tiny net cages of death and emasculation on the sunniest day in eternity. my deodorant was vaporized by my pits after about 30 seconds. but it was gorgeous and full of sites for judah to soak up...including me getting the snot scared out of me by 3 separate CFA cows over the course of the morning.

daddy and judah by a dodge pit of nerfie death


ok, this is just a bit much...take note of their hand placements. this was NOT posed. if lena and i ever die at an early age, don't be surprised if this is what ends up happening afterwards.

as the sun started creeping toward high noon, the last vestiges of my old spice were gone and the jeans were causing a wicked case of swampass, so me and lena decided to peace out a bit early. shockingly, our team had been doing really well. it was so shocking because most of the other teams had matching outfits and dodgeball type skills, and our guys were just athletic and present, but boy did they get it done. even still, we couldn't stay for the playoffs because judah was 3 hours past naptime and mommy was smelly and sunburned and hungry.

so we went and had lunch (judah was literally asleep before we got out of the dodgeball parking lot)and then hung out at lena's apartment where we were joined a few hours later by the boys who had made it all the way to the semi-finals (not bad considering there were like 30 teams in all). we decided to head down to the pool (after i borrowed a razor from lena, doy) to chlorinate the sweat away.
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even though i had been to their apartment several times, i had never been to the pool. apparently they live in melrose place, atlanta sector. it was seriously hilarious. all these tan, skinny girls who have never experienced life with a mucus plug lined up along the pool's edge, ushering me down the walk of pasty, saggy, mommy shame. now, i am at the stage of pregnancy where i can suck in and look not at all pregnant or push out after a meal and look far more pregnant than i am. sooooooo, to explain myself i pushed out like it was nobody's business and lovingly stroked my pale gut as if it was actually more than 3% baby so they would all know i had an excuse (because a 10.5 month old is not an excuse these days). i also had lena say things involving "you're pregnant" at really loud volumes. plus anyway, the joy of growing my very own family more than makes up for any nostalgia for having "muscles" or "curves" or "attractiveness." MORE than makes up for. in fact, i could just feel jealous rays shooting out of those chicks' perky boobs, reflecting off their manicured fingernails and hitting me square in the saddlebags and ashy heels. suck it, bitches, i'm living the high life!
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judah has the healthiest body image of anyone i know

precious chlorinated chumps

and we finished off a classique spring day with din at casa grande (formerly elliot's least favorite mexican restaurant EVER, thanks for sharing that after i had already gotten my heart set on it). judah enjoyed water and other baby foods i couldn't bring myself to look at while the rest of us ate approximately 1.7 baskets of chips each in a pre-meal gorge that defied explanation. i was like 3rd trimestie after the entrees. and dessert.

lena snapped this gem of a pic of judah across the table.
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ok and this is what the little monster was doing all over the place before the games started that morning. does this count? he did a really long stretch before i got my camera out, but i am so ready to call this a milestone and be done with it. (also, check out lena's cleavage in the background, apparently she didn't know this would be an outdoor tournament either and thought it would be hosted in a brothel).


4.16.2010

jumped the tracks

here's the weekly pic from last saturday when we hit 9 weeks.

but first a random pic of judah so that my bloated soft white underbelly doesn't end up as the preview picture on everyone's blogroll

it's a grape (and we're pretty sure a girl, too)

4.14.2010

i come by it honestly

allow me to rescind the apology i issued my mom. she should be apologizing to ME. additional evidence has come to light concerning my shoddy nutritional predelictions. that's right, she was the one who put this meal in front of me when i was what appears to be less than 18 months old. addiction source located! she served me this meal as a super-fit physical education teacher who definitely knew better. have ye no shame, woman?! now, who exactly is to blame for the hideous haircut i am rocking?

vintage, baby. (geez, is that freaking coke i am drinking!?!?!)

i'm sick and they're cute

so you get pictures. instead of a real post...again.

yup that's one of those baby leashes that are disguised as backpacks to avoid people judging us. we aren't ashamed. it's adorable and will keep him from running into traffic. he doesn't even fit into it yet but we were trying to give him a stabilizer harness to get his walking confidence down. it didn't work...but he has taken some quasi-steps since then anyway. from left to right: turtle, human, monkey, cat.

sorry for the food in the mouth, but this is damn cute.

sneaky mcnakester


be still. be still MY HEART. (that's a song i just wrote).

4.13.2010

wish upon a krystal star

preface: dear mom, i realize that at my behest, you came to our house on sunday, after a week of shopping and cooking, bearing 18 full delicious, healthy meals and bunches of groceries to help us get through these last (please, lord) few weeks of morning sickness-induced cooking/shopping aversion. please realize how much i appreciate this and plan to eat every morsel of the fruits of your efforts and the fruits that you bought at the store. the following story should not be taken as a slap in the face and instead should be seen as simply the psychotic whims of my pregnant stomach that is averaging 1.25 vomits per day. i love you and your food.
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here's the deal with my particular brand of morning sickness. any food that i have to see or smell before i am 100% starving and ready to eat it becomes repulsive to me almost instantly at the thought of actually eating it. this means i pretty much have to wait until i am really really hungry and then ambush my food. or more likely, this means that someone else has to prepare my food for me. i hate smelling it beforehand so that rules out jesse cooking (which he so would). and since ALL food repulses me right up until the moment where i am so hungry that judah's little leg rolls are starting to resemble plump crullers, i don't feel like going to a nice healthy restaurant and waiting 20 minutes for them to steam or de-fattify my food. essentially this means that during this dreadful period of early pregnancy i eat a lot of fast food. shame given. shame taken. moving on.
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i think jesse, my coworkers and my birth teacher would testify that i am a pretty nutritional pregnant eater. with judah the sickness stopped right on the 10 week mark, the day he went from embryo to fetus. so that left 29 weeks of produce, grains and lean meats to cancel out the 10 (really only 6 or 7) weeks of arterial purgatory. judah has glowing skin, robust nail beds and a supple coat to attest to the fact that i did a pretty good job. so i don't feel so bad about the trash i ate there at first when the blog tagline would have been "put up your dukes: just barely surviving."
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so there's my shoddy justification. moving on. all i could think about today from the moment i woke up was, "what time does krystal start serving lunch?" that's right, i had a craving. my cravings tend to be very specific and not repetitive. i don't always want pickles for the whole 9 months, but so help me if you don't give me a zaxby's chicken finger in about 30 seconds, this whole place is gonna burn! and then i won't eat that same food again for 24 weeks or something. so today was krystal.
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i must say that krystal, while also the most disgusting, nutritionally-void and least-customer-service minded restaurant chain in this great nation, is by far my favorite fast food joint.

once, when i was a freshman in college i ate there the night before a volleyball game. i got debilitating diarrhea (think hot, yellow foam) the next morning that kept me from being able to play and the trainer blamed it on the chili cheese pups (little did he know that my steel colon was MADE for all things chili-cheese and it was probably that fruit and granola i had eaten at pregame that my intestines were rebelling against). i was slapped with a lifetime ban by my coach.

luckily, i don't play under that regime any longer. not that that ever kept me away...lifetime bans are temporarily lifted when you and your BFF have had a bit too much to drink and after 3 hours of spastic undulations that we were just so sure was super hot and rhythmic dance moves you all of a sudden realize that you have never been so hungry in your entire life so you hike it over to krystal and order half the menu followed by snuggling up in a booth mumbling into our grease-laden soggy buns about how its the best food we've ever eaten in our entire lives while also pondering if that homeless person ensconced in his/her windbreaker to our left is a male, female or turtle. ah, the golden years.

homeless hair and musical talent simulated. problem skin and hess's pants are reality

have a made my point? i love krystal. today, the only thing i aspired to was eating there for lunch. so my old volvo was idling just beyond the drive thru entry when the clocked ticked over to 10:30 am. $10 later (how the fuuuuuuuuh?) i was proudly dragging my bounty back to my desk. my office is on the second floor so taking the stairs preemptively cancels it all out anyway.


dreams do come true (look away, mom!)

i got a little ahead of myself and ordered way too much. i only ate one pup and one double cheese krystal, but it was so worth it. i have a raging sodium/caffiene/saturated meat fat headache right now, but i wouldn't trade it for the world. everybody say your prayers that the end of the pregpocalypse comes this saturday at week 10!

4.12.2010

a package from lena

godmother to judah, BFF to me, and blog favorite, lena, was in the know back when we were talking about wanting to maybe have another baby. never one to try to push her point of view on someone else, here are the full contents of a package i received in the mail from her about 2 days after she found out we were thinking about trying again.

that's right, she wants not just 4, but "four (4)" godchildren.


helping me to break my addiciton before it even starts

i am 27, lena.

me: "oh, wow, that's actually pretty cool of her to be so understanding if we decide not to have another" and then i flip it over...

"ah, yes. that's more like it."

she's got her finger on the pulse of the pregnant lower GI

oh wow. so much good material here. i'll let you explore on your own. p.s. lena wants a god daughter this time around if you couldn't tell
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lena gave us the heads up as soon as we got pregnant again that she didn't love this one as much as judah quite yet. that's cool, lena, we don't either. and she took it like a champ when we had to back out of our much looked-forward to trip to NYC with the hunts because it fell in the middle of hellish first trimester doom sickness (this turned out to be the right move since the trip was last weekend and i was totally worthless). something tells me judah may be sporting and i heart NY onesie pretty soon though.

4.08.2010

proxy

ok, i usually don't like it when bloggers do this, so now of course i am going to do it. i am violently ill today and just don't have it in me for a new post (broken record, much?). instead of crapping out completely though, i am going to direct you back to a classic post.
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for those of you who have been along for the ride since last summer, feel free to skip this (though its really cool to go back and listen to it now that judah is almost one and not just a fetus), but since we seem to have a bunch of new folks, i definitely want to make sure that some of the great old posts get the love they deserve (assuming the new folks aren't going back and reading cover to cover like they, ahem, SHOULD! ha, not.)
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this one is by jesse and it's all about an amazing song he wrote and recorded for judah before we ever laid eyes on the little man, a whole month before he was born. it's kind of flippin' unreal, you guys. seriously, that's not just wifey rah-rah; i call plenty of songs he has written fluff or blah, but this one is a home run.
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4.07.2010

winner!

wow. picking a winner was way harder than i thought. i narrowed it down to about 4 favorites but then i had a really tough time. i kept wanting to know who wrote what. but in the end, jesse forced me to be 100% blind and here's how things fell.

these are the 3 runners-up in order of closeness to being picked. i really loved all of these and how well they fit the picture and yet were freaking funny.

Evan said...
"Get in my BELLY!!!"
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angie said...
"i'm just going to put it out there, if you don't like it just send it back"
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The Del Angel Family said...
"Bet you've never seen anything like THIS in Mexico, babe! Eat your heart out!"
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and after much excruciating deliberation i finally chose this as the winner:
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Emma's Mommy said:

"Whoa now, gir'... you better watch yoself! Pimps like me can be admired but NOT touched."

ok i was worried this one might be a little anti-woman; since i am not the mother of a little girl i wasn't sure how it would go over...especially since i happen to love miss elsita a bunch. but in the end since the writer was a girl AND a mommy to a girl i thought it should be allowed because it is kind of just what the picture looks like with judah in his outrageous mac daddy attire. in actuality, there were also about 6 other pictures that showed the reality of the situation which was judah trying to climb all over elsa and her just being so over him. hopefully it won't offend sweet elsa because it's far more than likely that one day she will be telling judah, "hands off!" than the reverse ever happening. emma's mommy, email me your address and which restaurant you want the certificate to!

honorable mention goes to dina the perennial blog lurker for her facebook wall caption submission of, "b*tches ain't sh*t," which definitely gets DQ'd for sexism though it was shockingly hilarious. and i can say that because i am one of those b*tches and because we all know judah would never say that about any lady. kudos dina, now please de-shadow.

i am thrilled to be able to go back to moderating my own comments and not have to cover up the left side of the screen (because i brilliantly installed a recent comments widget on the same day that i vowed not to read them).

4.06.2010

genesis 43

quick! there has been a brief reprieve in my pregnancy doomsday malaise so i am going to try to give you a blog post until it strikes again. miraculously judah didn't make a peep from 6:45 pm last night until 7 am today. this is miraculous because i was home alone with him while jesse went camping with some youth boys (on the night of the ncaa championship, whaaaa???). i put him (judah) down and put my earplugs in, determined to not jump at every tiny peep. well, at 7 this morning i hear him through 2 doors, earplugs and the fog of sleep in his room, not crying, but jabbering like a fool, "DA DA DA DA DA DA." i wanted to leave the little rapscallion in there until he started asking for mama. so yeah, it's a good day so far. p.s. these pictures aren't cute with rounded edges because, shit takes time, y'all, and i don't know how much i have.
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one of my BFFs, natalie, lives in england and does campus ministry for jesus. she also happens to have a son that is 2 days younger than judah (though gestationally 2 weeks older). they are best friends...they have no choice in the matter. these little guys have hung out amazingly 5 times (since benj lives in england!) in their little 10 month lives. we call them the 2 little tribesmen because judah and benjamin are the names of 2 of the 12 tribes of isreal/sons of jacob. we joke that we will eventually assemble the entire chosen people of god between the two of our uteruses. i think right now we have dibs on naphtali and natalie and robert have called gad and zebulun as theirs. oh, old testament funsies.

10 month homies reunited and it feels so good!
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and here is ye olde flashback for comparison's sake:

5 weeks...hahahahahahaha. please note how teensie benj was


12 weeks...hello, prime minister chamberlain! benj bulked up in the intervening months and hasn't looked back. not matching outfits, but fully coordinating color palettes.

5 months old at becky's wedding. we were too lazy to get pics before they passed out


at christmas break, about 6.5 months old. benj had mastered crawling already so he kindly gave his brother a ride. braden thinks it's a riot. and 'twas because judah kept tapping on benj's little head.



and back to the present. utterly precious big boys. this was judah's turn to caress benj's foot.


and now it's benjamin's turn!


judah's turn again!

and after about 5 seconds it was time to put them in their matching outfits. they actually have 3 sets of matchies thanks to natalie's AMAZING gift-giving skills (i suck). here, the tribesmen sport baby threadless original onesies. this design is called "progeny" and features a mama organ, daddy guitar and baby keytar...get it? so cheeky, those threadless folks.

benj says, "what up, G?"

time for tapas! sweet potato puffs were a huge hit for judah who had never had them. benj had never had cheerios so we shared our stash in return and he went ballistic over them.

this kills me. "OMG these are sooooooo good, don't you think?"


piggies at the trough!


their faces are OOC here and totally crack me up. who even knows what we were doing to try to get smiles?


natalie attempts to read judah the fireman book before he can rip it out of her hands. meanwhile...

...benj has spotted an errant cheerio under our 8 inch tall coffee table shelf and has gone in on a rescue mission

SUCCESS!

enjoying the afterglow. "i am stuck, but that was sooooo worth it"

two homies at the bar. this will play out many times in decades to come. possibly not in matching outfits and matching cups...but who knows? please appreciate that i put judah's blender toy up on the table for added bar effect


just a little chaser


pilates break!

"maybe by the combined power of our little thigh rolls, we can take down this damn gate and finally indulge in the bounty that is fireplace rocks in our mouths!"


"um, can we help you?" "move along. nothing to see here"


"see ya next time, bff!"

these little dudes are unreal. it is beyond fun to see them interact and play and just as fun to watch them ignore each other or get in baby drama. judah is the youngest kid in his preschool class by a few months, so this was awesome to see him play with a best friend that is identical in age. surprisingly, even though judah is with kids all day, he was way more of a baby about sharing and getting bumped than benj, who hangs around with adoring college kids daily and doesn't go to preschool. i am gonna blame it on a bad nap that day and it possibly being hard for him to all of a sudden have another baby up in "his" space.
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it's so weird to be starting that phase of watching your kid get upset by one of his friends knocking him down accidentally or taking a toy from him and trying to iron it out at the parental level (where it's probably way more traumatic and delicate). luckily nat is a bestie, so that makes it no worries. even still, they seemed to have a lot of fun playing near and on top of one another...but it was defintely way more fun for me and nat to remember conversations that happened seemingly all of 3 minutes ago when we had tiny apple-sized fetuses and could hardly even imagine holding babies of our own, much less seeing them crawl and climb and play together. ahhhh, the circle of life!
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if god happens to call the braden fam home from england we are hoping they will live nearby so that this little tribal bromance will continue forever and ever. nat and i like to envision cooperative babysitting, co-bday parties, tiniest tee-ball and other dorky mommy dreams.
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time's up. gotta go barf. see ya never.