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Oy With the Poodles Already.

It’s about time the revival is here. This is one of my favorite shows of all time. I am sure there are many out there that share my enthusiasm.

SO. VERY. EXCITED.

I have re-watched this show so many times. I resonate with both Lorelei and Rory for different reasons each time I watch it.

As I have re-watched it though, here are some things that I have noticed that are odd:

  • Seriously, how do they go to Luke’s every morning for breakfast before Rory has to get to Chilton? Who has time for that?
  • They make really late Friday night plans for after Friday night dinners at the grandparents which is supposedly 30 minutes away. Again, who has time for that?
  • The actress who plays the girlfriend of Jess’s dad is also April’s mom in later episodes. Same actress two different characters.
  • There are two different Caesars. In the first season it is an older skinny man, and then in later seasons it is the heftier younger Caesar. Who might I add was also at the Chilton dance in one of the earlier episodes as an extra student. I am on to you GG producers…
  • The dorm size is just plain ridiculous.
  • How are Paris and Rory graduating at the same time with Rory’s lost semester and not taking any summer classes? We all know that Paris was accelerated, so I don’t understand why they graduate in the same year.
  • Did anyone else think that the Yale graduation was small and question it being on the lawn? This can’t be an accurate depiction of how Yale does graduations.

All in all despite these questions that obviously only come out when you binge watch the entire series every couple years, I am obsessed with this show. I can’t wait for it to be released this weekend. I have been reading every article posted about the revival.

I am excited to see what books Rory is reading these days.

I am excited to see how the Dragon Fly is doing for Lorelei.

I am excited to see what job Kirk has now.

I am excited to see Emily’s meltdown.

I am excited to see old friends like Paris, Lane, and Sooki.

And as with everyone else, I am excited to see who will Rory end up with. If I had to pick from her former interests I would obviously pick Jess. However, I am hoping that she doesn’t feel like she has to end up with them and maybe they will surprise us and bring in someone brand new for her. Or maybe she doesn’t need a man to define her and they will leave us in the same spot they did at the last ending.

Oy with the poodles already.

Also be kind if you watch it this weekend. Some of us won’t be so lucky to binge these four episodes the moment it comes out. Holiday traveling problems, y’all. So keep those last four words to yourself. Don’t spoil it for the rest of us.

Who else is excited to see our Girls again? What’s your favorite story line?

 

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Book Review-The Radical Book for Kids

This book is beautifully amazing.

I was really excited to review this book for two reasons:

  1. The area of raising a child of faith is one area of parenting that terrifies me. What if I push to hard, what if I don’t say enough? How do I encourage curiosity but also faith in the unknown? I need all the guidance I can get.
  2. I started teaching youth Sunday School, so again, any help to guide these young minds is a bonus.

My favorite thing about this book is the versatility of it. You don’t have to read it straight through, or you can if you are a kid like I was.

It can be read by adults or a self-guided book for your child.

It covers everything from scriptures to history of faith.

Here are other things I like about this book for kids:

  1. The organization-Each “chapter” is only a couple pages. Enough to keep the attention of a young adult but also give them some real meat.
  2. It provides that foundation of history and context for why some things are the way they are in the Bible.
  3. It has good advice from manners to how to read your Bible.
  4. It talks about men and women who lived by faith and explained their history. These are people that they may be learning about in school already. Obviously, I love the history aspect.
  5. It is fun. There are recipes and crafts thrown in to show different aspects of the culture they may find throughout the Bible.

For me, it seemed to bring the Bible more to life. I think we can all be honest with ourselves that it can be a struggle to read the Bible sometimes and sift through some of the passages. I think having a companion book like this to help spark interest and conversation is a great way to get kids thinking beyond the words on the page.

I am definitely going to use some of the examples with my high schoolers, and I can’t wait to start using this with our kids. It is going to be a radical tool to start those conversation of faith and how to nurture it.

 

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Baby 2-Nine Weeks

This was the week that we found out about George. So the last 5 weeks have been so drastically different this go around. I loved having the documentation of George’s time in my belly, so I definitely want to do this all again. I just hope I can keep up with it this time.

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How far along: 9 weeks

Sex of Baby W: No clue

Weight gain: None so far

Size of Baby W:  A grape

Maternity clothes: While there may not be any weight gain, I am already starting to show. This is a big change since I lost 10 lbs during the first trimester in my first pregnancy, and I didn’t start to show until much later on. I am already at the point where I can’t button pants (and have been for a few weeks), and I am wearing the belly bands out of comfort. I am not holding out this time, and I perfectly fine with being in bigger/looser clothes. Plus I will admit that while I lost all the baby weight, I never quite lost the baby ring around my belly, so it is only fitting that it’s popping out much quicker. I can’t quite fit into maternity pants yet, but I think that is coming around Thanksgiving. (Which I can’t be mad about) I told Tom a few weeks ago that this may be a big pregnancy…

Baby items: I bought a onsie from my alma mater while we were there for Homecoming. I have also bought two items for their room to get us started on the theme which is going to be sea creatures. 

Stretch marks: Nothing yet.

Belly button in or out:  Still in.

Sleep: Fairly good, but I generally have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee. Most of that is due to the fact that I drink a cup of water right before bed now to make up for my missed water intake, so I only imagine this will get worse. But once I am asleep, I get really good sleep.

Best moment the past few weeks: Seeing baby on the ultrasound. George kissing “babee” goodnight every night.

Worst moment the past few weeks: Trip to the ER, but that did get us to see baby on it’s first ultrasound.

Miss anything: Being able to eat deli meat. Having an ultrasound every couple weeks. It is really hard to go from having an appointment every two weeks like we did with George, and now only going every four weeks. This is torture not knowing if everything is ok.

Cravings: Marinated mushrooms. I could eat a jar of them all day every day. This is really the only thing I am wanting honestly. I tolerate the rest of the food I eat just for nourishment. I am not really wanting much salty foods, and salads make me want to gag.

Movement: My little grape is too small for this yet.

Symptoms/how I am feeling: I can’t eat because of nausea, and I am nauseous because I can’t eat. It is an awful cycle that makes me eat maybe a fourth of what I normally eat at each meal. With George, my hormones weren’t on board with the pregnancy so I was having cramps and dizzyness enough where I had to stay home some days. However, I was still able to eat meals. This time I am nauseous pretty much all day. I am also so exhausted. I feel like an awful mom right now because most days I fall asleep on the couch while George plays with trains. Growing a baby is tiring, but doing it with a baby on the outside as well is like something more exhausting than just exhausted. (I am too tired to think of quippy things.)

Looking forward to: Thanksgiving. Hopefully my nausea goes away so I can fully take part in all the food and take advantage of being pregnant over the holidays.

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The biggest difference is for sure having George around while growing another human. It is making me cherish our moments alone so much more. The other big difference is my hormones actually reading this pregnancy. It will be interesting to now compare my updates from here on out with what we documented for George.

 

 

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Start Spreading the News

The last time we were pregnant, we were far away from all family so we told everyone just as soon as we found out over the phone.

This time being near family, I really wanted to do something to pop the news on them.

I created a video for George’s first year with all the pictures I took with my fancy camera. You can see that here. This is something I want to keep doing each year since I am not into scrapbooks.

So I decided I could make his year two video also the announcement video.

I didn’t think I would raise any suspicions when I brought it over for them to watch at one of our regular family gatherings. I may have been a bit eager to show it, but they didn’t raise any eyebrows to that until after they saw it. (My brother-in-law however called what was going on by my aggressive request to watch this before our normal family dinner.)

I was really happy that Tom’s grandma could be there to see it too. All of my grandmas are gone, so that was really special for us that she was able to be part of this.

There was no way I could wait until we were in person to tell my family, and they would have known something was up if I said to Skype because we never do that. However, my mom guessed it before I could tell her when I called with the news. She is a smart one, that lady!

Next up is my first bumpdate this go around!

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How We Found Out

When we decided to start trying for the baby number two, I had a lot of anxiety. Since we never tested positive as pregnant with George until I was in my second trimester, I worried that we would have a similar process. However, this time we wouldn’t have a happenstance meeting with a sonogram to find out about this baby. (You can read more about how we found out about George here.)

We had been trying since August so when on October 1st I started bleeding, I just thought my period had come a week early. Being off birth control means that my period had no rhyme or reason to when it started.

That same day, I was running a 10K with my sister-in-law. I thought, perfect, what a day to start the worst week of the month when I have planned to run 6 miles. I had trained fairly consistently for this run, so I was really mad at my body when starting on mile four I was really lightheaded and had to walk most of the last two miles. I have gotten sick and endured cramps on runs before, but I had never been so lightheaded that I thought I might pass out.

Obviously I pushed through it, and finished the race not really thinking anything of the lightheadedness and just blamed it on it being “that time of the month.”

Then I didn’t bleed for the next two days.

On that Monday, I woke up thinking maybe I should just take a pregnancy test. I can’t really explain it but I just thought maybe this is why my body was weird all weekend.

So I peed on a stick and got ready for my shower.

And there it was. A faint blue line telling me it was positive.

I was in shock because I had prepared myself to never ever see the blue line after our experience with George.

I re-read the instructions to double check that a “faint” line was still positive.

Then I took another test from a different brand just to make sure.

Same result.

I am pregnant.

(I took another one a few days later before I met with my doctor, just to make sure too. There were definitely no faint lines that time!)

I hid the tests so Tom wouldn’t stumble on them since he was off that day. I knew I had to wait until after work to tell him.

It was all I could do to be productive that day. I was a nervous wreck with this secret in my belly.

Luckily, Tom had George that day, so I could run to the store to pick up a card for Tom.

In my head I always envisioned doing something elaborate to tell him, but I was just ready to tell him and there wasn’t time to plan something out. So he just got a “Congrats” card with two people high-fiving, which fit us perfectly anyway.

Tom cried when I told him, and then he proceeded to beg to tell everyone we know.

Since I had no idea how far along I was, I panicked and freaked out about telling anyone before we had anything confirmed.

We found out about George when we were 9 weeks pregnant and told the world when we were 11 weeks. So this was a huge difference for us.

I immediately started thinking about the worst case scenario, and wanted to keep this a secret until our second trimester.

Then I remembered an article that I read a while back that talked about why we as women have this idea that we have to keep this wonderful thing a secret and basically isolate ourselves until we are 12/13 weeks pregnant. There shouldn’t be this stigma that we can’t tell people this news that we are pregnant on the off-chance that something were to go wrong.  Here is the article that does a much better job articulating my thoughts. I don’t want to have to pretend this isn’t happening.

Plus trying to have my husband keep a secret for any amount of time is a struggle and an insane request.

But I still wanted to wait a little bit before we shared, so we compromised that we would share as soon as we saw the baby on a sonogram to confirm that everything was moving as it should. (And he could tell our Parents as Teacher facilitator who was coming over that same night.)

Because of some complications (blood clot and severe bleeding), we had an emergency visit where we were able to see the baby and it’s little heart beating at 6 weeks. I then saw it again with a specialist the next week. Everything was confirmed to be looking good and normal even with my history of issues. And here we are a week later, 8 weeks pregnant.

While this story is definitely not as dramatic as George’s story, nor did it take as long to get pregnant, we are over the moon excited about this transition in our family.

Up Next:  How we told our family!