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Monday, January 21, 2013

If you give a dog a bone...

She's going to want to smack you with it.





Once again, I apologize for my ridiculous laughter in the background.  It makes my momma happy to hear me laughing, so the rest of you must endure.  :)





Thursday, January 17, 2013

Newest Weight Loss Trick!

I have found it.  The most amazing, unbelievable solution to weight loss ever!  And it's so easy.  No pills, creams or crazy exercise regimes.

All you have to do is get pregnant!

Act now and I'll throw in some stylish maternity belly pants for free!

(Sorry, I know, 2 pregnancy posts back to back is a bit much, don't worry I have cute Cleo videos and odd stories about Cairo coming soon, promise!)

Ok, but seriously... one of the things most women fret about is how big they're going to get while pregnant.  *By the way, these are also usually the women who weigh themselves daily and talk about calories like they're actually an interesting subject of conversation.*

I wasn't worried about how much weight I would gain... thanks to my mom I was given the extremely rare gift of a healthy body image.  We had conversations about how strong and beautiful the human body is when you take care of it. I can see myself clearly, and I'm pretty happy with what I've been given, even if I don't look like the models on the covers of magazines.

What I wasn't expecting to learn at my doctor's appointment last night, was that I've lost weight, again.  Even with the bigger belly/uterus/baby/boobs, and the fact that we just got back from two weeks of gorging on delicious American favorites, I've still managed to lose 6 pounds since becoming pregnant.  Got to admit that's stumping me a bit.  I have been trying to eat healthy, you know give the little guy some much needed vitamins and nutrients, but I've enjoyed my share of the bad stuff too.  I realize there's not as much room in there, so my meals have been smaller and more frequent.  But come on, losing weight, that's kinda weird right? Especially since I didn't get horribly sick and throw up everything I ate during the first trimester.  Right now I'm about 10 pounds behind where I should be for healthy pregnancy weight gain.

Who knows, maybe I've found the next diet fad?  I should probably warn you that the FDA has not endorsed this method of weight loss yet.  So your results might vary from mine.  And yes I give everyone full permission to laugh their asses off if I balloon into the good year blimp over the next few months.  It only seems fair.  :)

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Woah! There's a creature in there!

So you might have heard I'm working on a science experiment at the moment.  It's in my uterus (giggle giggle, yes I'm a third grader) and it's been an interesting experiment so far.

We spent the first 14 weeks or so just hoping the little creature would hold on tight and survive life in the "roll cage" as we have been affectionately been referring to my belly.  There's not really much else to do in the first trimester but worry.  You can't feel anything, can't see much on a sonogram except a heartbeat, if you're lucky, and it's really easy for the anxiety to compound.

When we hit the 2nd trimester and saw our little froggy leaping around like crazy, it started to sink in a bit more.  I was now about 60% sure we were going to have a baby.  Which led to excitement over cute outfits and massive amounts of research about things you don't ever think about until a baby comes into your realm of possibility.  Strollers and carseats, breast pumps and bottles.  There are about 17 million baby items for sale in the world, and most books, magazines and stores are very good at convincing you that you need at least 16 million of them.  Luckily for us, the fact that anything we buy in the states has to be "imported" in our suitcases, we've managed to focus on the basic necessities so far.

I'm now at about 19 weeks.  We even know that our budding babe has a wee willy in there. But now it's a holding pattern.  The roll cage is expanding daily, I can literally see and feel myself becoming more pregnant every time I look in the mirror.  But I still can't feel any movement.  And that's what I want more than anything else. So of course, there's still the twinge of fear.

I know, I know, we always want more right!  It's never enough!  As soon as I do feel him move, I'll probably start complaining about how he's keeping me up at night.  (Insert irony here)

So I'm trying to relax, focus on the positive and remember how exciting it is that Ryan and I created a new life, albeit a slightly evil looking one at the moment.  Though to be fair, I think most babies probably look like Voldemort when they don't have any body fat yet.  Don't worry, we'll still love him even if he becomes a dark lord of magic.  Cuz he's our baby boy.





Wednesday, January 9, 2013

2012 in a nutshell


Sorry for the long delay in keeping up with my blog... It was strangely reassuring to have so many people comment on the fact that they hadn't read anything in awhile...

People actually read this thing?  Cool!  :)

So in keeping with last years tradition, here is my recap of 2012, which luckily didn't end in the destruction of life as we know it, take that Mayans!

Ryan and I kept up our traveling bug and visited Jordan, exploring Petra with it's amazing architecture built into the cliffs of sandstone.




And then to Scotland over Spring Break.  It was a wonderful trip full of tea, highlands, soccer, bacon,  and lochs, even a few baby lambs frolicking.








Ryan got lazy and let his hair reach epic lengths, which led to some interesting morning/hat hair.






Luckily he let me shave it all off for another trip to Dahab... long hair and scuba are not a fun combination.  We got our advanced diving certifications and enjoyed dabbling in underwater photography.













We decided not to travel back to the states over the summer.  Instead we had lazy days playing with Cleo and even celebrated the 4th of July in good ole American style with a cookout, friends, apple pie and fireworks!







We couldn't stay in Egypt the whole summer though, so on my birthday we headed to Venice and departed on a 14 day cruise around the Mediterranean and Adriatic. We visited Croatia, Greece (including the islands of Mykonos, Santorini, and Corfu), Turkey, and ended up back in Italy.  Ryan and I had fun bumming around in Venice for a few days before heading home.












With the start of school came some rough weeks of sickness and injury... buy also some good news when we found out I was pregnant!  Had to take 2 tests just to be sure.  :)







While we kept our big news a secret, we planned another trip to visit some friends in Dubai.  We spent more time in malls than we're used to, but that's where all the fun is in Dubai.






And at long last it was time for a very special wedding.  My amazing mother had put off her wedding for so long, wanting us to be able to come home and be a part of the ceremony.  We got to see Patricia and Wayne become the Fullers, played with their foster kids, did a lot of baby shopping, spent time with all of our family and even found out we're having a boy!





So all in all 2012 turned out to be a pretty good year!  We traveled to 8 countries, set our feet on 4 different continents, found out we're having a baby boy and got to see my mom get married!  Can't wait to see what 2013 brings.  :)