Taking the Plunge

When I was pregnant with Adam, I gained a whopping fifty pounds.  My weight gain wasn't really on track throughout my pregnancy; I was able to wear my regular jeans until I was almost six months pregnant and then right at the six month mark my weight just went nuts.  This may have had something to do with my eating habits, as I distinctly remember eating an entire container of iced chocolate brownies with ice cream.  I was crazy for potatoes in the beginning of my pregnancy but toward the middle to the end all I wanted was sweets.  Hot fudge brownie sundaes to be precise.  With my pregnancy with Adam, I had no issue whatsoever eating for two.  By the end of my pregnancy, my belly was so huge that it skewed my perception of the rest of my body.  I'd look in the mirror and say, "Wow, I'm all belly!"  I couldn't see that my thighs had also gotten pregnant because they looked so small next to my belly.  Now in all fairness, I was A LOT of belly but definitely not ALL belly. There was no way that all fifty pounds of glory was all belly.

35 weeks pregnant.  Holy shit.

When that time came when I could no longer button my jeans, I still wasn't ready to buy maternity clothes.  Instead, I would hit up the local Discovery for some new low quality threads.  I found that buying jeans in a size two or three larger than what I currently wore did the trick for a while.  Were they flattering?  Hell no.  The thighs (even though mine were large) were baggy and the ass sagged.  As far as shirts, luckily my pregnancy was at the time where the empire waist was all the rage, so I bought regular shirts and wore tank tops underneath.  It's safe to say I looked like a frumpy hot mess in denial.  Now to defend the frump, the maternity clothes at that time were not designed with any kind of flattery or style in mind.  Especially not for a twenty year old.  They were fugly.  The only exception was "boutique" maternity stores, where you'd pay upwards of $120 for jeans and at least $70 for a shirt.  With three to four month left in my pregnancy, I couldn't justify spending that kind of money (when I could be using it for cake).  I noticed last summer that maternity clothes were actually getting cute.  I would be in Target and saunter by and a pretty top would catch my attention---SURPRISE, it's maternity.  I would then tell whoever was with me (see: Adam) that maternity clothes are "soooooo much cuter now."

Fast forward to now:  I'm about four-and-a-half months pregnant and even though I've only gained four pounds, my belly is starting to pop and it's quite firm, so there is no mistaking that I'm pregnant.  I have been extremely conscious of what I have been eating and have been making healthier choices so that I don't get myself into the situation I was in before (see: fat).  I can still fit into my regular jeans, but because the cut is higher than the ones I was wearing when I was nineteen (see: my ass crack doesn't show when I bend over), they're just not that comfortable.  It's time for some maternity clothes.  I am actually really excited about it because I've been circulating between the same few pairs of shorts for the last two weeks and I saw some genuinely cute pieces at Target (see: not a shit ton of money).  My endeavor for the day is to find a couple things that will last me until the weather gets all shit balls cold.

Let's just pray that I don't go all demented and end up at Discovery again.  Unless I'm shutting the place down.

Picture Pefect

My friend and I had a conversation today discussing what we do with our digital photographs of our kids.  I have albums that my mother made for me “back in the day” when you had to develop pictures to actually see what they looked like.  With the convenience of taking pictures digitally, many great pictures get posted to the web or stored on the memory card just waiting for a viewer.

I thought I would share how I manage Adam pictures, because I always love when others share their organizational tips.  Today I embarked on a journey to print 431 pictures from 2009 so that I can put them in a nice photo box to sit and collect dust.  I am so scared that due to the digital revolution, adorable photographs will sit on my laptop never to be viewed by anyone---or, get lost when my computer gets another virus.  What I have done so far is organize my photographs of Adam by year:

From there, I organize each photo into a folder based on the month it was taken.  On Windows, you can learn the date taken on each photo just by holding your mouse pointer over the picture:

 

So that my photos don’t get stuck in Computerland forever, I do several things with them.  I have a chronological 12x12 scrapbook that I do that highlights events throughout the year.  For this, I choose my favorite pictures and do more of the “crafty” stuff, with stickers, backgrounds, embellishments, etc.  Since I can only fit a few pictures per page, I also print all of the pictures from that year and store them chronologically in a photo box (each year has its own box).  I tried to find a 4x6 album to accommodate all of the prints from that year, but I couldn’t find anything of high enough capacity.  Once I know all of the pictures are printed, I then burn that year onto a CD and store that in the photo box as well.  I found that printing all of the pictures from that year forces you to be a little bit more decisive with your pictures.  With the ease of being able to delete so easily with a digital camera, I know I am guilty of taking pictures of things and looking back and thinking "WTF!?"  Suddenly when it comes time to print them all, you can look and say, "There is no way I am paying for six back-to-back pictures of child 1.0 doing the same exact thing."  In the beginning of 2009 when I printed the photos from 2008, there were over 1500 prints (and that was only May-December).  I just got the willpower to go through the pictures from 2009 and there were only 431.  Five more months of photos, yet over A THOUSAND less pictures taken.  I took a peek into the 2010 folder and there are only 355!  As far as the scrapbook is concerned, I am up to summer of 2010 in Adam's album, and tomorrow my friend and I are attending a local scrap night where I plan on catching up on the rest of it.  My biggest joy is that I'll have albums (and boxes and boxes of photographs) to show Adam's girlfriend when he is brave enough to bring her around...I think I'll start with this one:

The Reign of Terror

Today I woke up in all sorts of bedlam.  So far, the first sixteen weeks of this pregnancy have been horrendous.  (Note: I am sixteen weeks pregnant).  However, when I awoke to the sweet sound of my child Van Damme-ing the door open, I realized I was in for it.  As I sat up to start my day of chasing Florence Griffith-Joyner, my nose started bleeding.  I made a dash (see: stumble) to my bathroom and it was then that my joyous morning sickness (see: ALL THE DAMN TIME) decided to come.  My child, who happens to be going through the "Twenty-One Questions" stage of development, started firing off his inquiries, only adding insult to injury.  Once the happenings started to subside, I was instantly greeted with a tension headache from the bowels of hell.  My morning sucked.  Luckily, yesterday we invested in a reclining chair (something I have always wanted) so I was able to park my ass in that lap of luxury while child 1.0 had some breakfast.  Child 2.0 has made up for the fact child 1.0 was so easy and it's not even born yet.  After trying unsuccessfully to mend myself, I knew there was only one thing that could make me feel better: Grande Mocha Coconut Frappuccino .  However, $4.94 later my head is still aching and I'm thanking the Napping Gods that child 1.0 loves to sleep for hours at a time.  Someone once said it's supposed to ease up soon...but someone else once said they went into labor at 39 weeks and still had morning sickness.