Drained...Literally.

Although I could NEVER watch, I'm sure my face looked a lot like this.

At my very first OB appointment with baby 2.0, my good ol' doctor wrote me up a big ol' order for prenatal bloodwork.  The thing with prenatal bloodwork is that they take a TON of vials; not just one or two little ones.  Although I can manage tattoos (have four of them) and piercings (x7), something about getting stuck with needles and emptied of my blood is a wee-tiny-bit creepy to me.  Since my pregnancy with Adam was so easy, I self evaluated that I did not need the blood work because nothing is wrong with me.  I figured they could just use my bloodwork from baby 1.0 and copy/paste the results.  They can do that, right?  Well obviously not, because my favorite nurse calls me every other week asking about them.  It's been ten weeks.  Now that hubby is all union-ified (unified?), our insurance covers everything 100% with no deductible or co-pay.  I had no excuse anymore.  I dragged my ass into the office and prayed to the Vein Gods that mine would cooperate today.  I have had horrible experiences in the past, a combination of the person drawing the blood and my shitty veins, and I thoroughly hate having it done.  Luckily the person who called me back was very nice and while niceness never is a guarantee of anything, she found my good vein and was able to access it on the first try.  I was staring out the window focusing my attention at anything except for what was going on.  I struggled to keep up with the small talk she was making because I was freaking out like a weirdo.  I waited and waited while she switched vial with vial and FINALLY she was finished.  Part of their procedure is that you have to verify the labels on the vials to make sure you're name is on them, which requires me to look and the vial and the contents (EW).  Eight vials later, I was SOOO ready to get the hell out of there.  I don't think I'm in the minority of thinkers when I say that that experience is just awful.  My arm is sore and bruised and it better not impede on me being able to dunk my cookies in my milk.

In other news, I took the initiative today to purchase a new bathroom vanity/sink and new floor tile for my bathroom.  Our place was built in 1982 and I am pretty sure most of the contents are original.  My bathroom is fugly.  It's taking all of my self control (and I don't have much) to not go in there RIGHT NOW and start tearing shit apart.  I'm impatient.  Speaking of impatient, we find out the gender of baby 2.0 in a little over a week and I can't wait to start creating that room either.  At any given time there is like nine projects going on in my house, clearly.  After talking with a mommy friend and fellow DIY-er last night, I have more drive then ever to finally bring our place into the current decade, regardless if I am all super pregnant and shit. 

When Saving Money Actually Sucks...

I'm in the center.  Obvs.

I first want to establish that I love grocery shopping.  I credit this to being extremely picky as a kid and living off of cereal and spaghetti-o's.  Now that I am less picky, I love grocery shopping because I love seeing what kind of food I can make and force Jack to eat.  I love going through each and every aisle and looking at everything and taking it all in.  In the beginning of my grocery shopping life (when I was only buying for myself), I would buy whatever I wanted (regardless of price).  I always had the yummiest food in the house, even if it was just Milano Cookies and chocolate milk.  Once I was buying for Jack and I, I started being more mindful of the price of things.  Jack will seriously eat everything in the house in one sitting if you let him.  I have seen him eat an entire large bag of chips in one afternoon.  I started buying the store brands of things because it cost less (and we had to buy double the quantity).  We also invested in a Sam's Club membership for some of the things that go extremely quickly (NOT for the price, simply for the quantity).  Once Adam started eating people food (jarred baby food is NOT people food), I knew I had to wise up fast because he is exactly like his father.  About a year ago, I started clipping coupons.  I feel the need to establish the difference between clipping coupons and couponing.  Those who clip coupons do it more casually and typically don't save as much money as those who coupon.  Couponers can walk out of a store and pay $2.72 for $60 of groceries.  HOWEVER: couponing takes a hell of a lot of time and energy, not to mention organizational skills that I do not have.  I know several people who coupon and they have to shop the ads and keep track of their coupons, etc. etc.  I preferred the lazier way that still saves me $1.00 off just for clipping the coupon out of the paper.  I often talk about my envy of those who coupon and save tons of money and have walls and walls of stockpiled goods.  I have been following an incredible couponer (www.raininghotcoupons.com) who explains her methods and even offers How-To's on her site---all while raising her young kids.  Super jealous.  Anyway, inspired by all of the great deals she mentions, I decided that I was going to shop the ads with my months supply of coupons I had been saving from the Sunday paper.  It took me over and hour just to line up (and write out my game plan) for one store.  My plan was golden.  I was going to get over $20 worth of things for $4.39---a first for me.  I drove to this store and was delighted that there were hardly any cars there.  I walk into this store and over to the first aisle and EVERYTHING on my list was sold out...empty shelves.  I go to the next aisle, same story.  I am fuming at this point because part of my exceptional deals relied on receiving those rewards that print out at the register for future purchases.  I am so angry that I could cry, and to make matters worse, this shithole of a store doesn't hire employees to work in the store aside from ONE cashier.  I walk up to ask the cashier about checking the stock of the items and she informs me she is the only one working at the time and cannot leave the register.  Showing poor manners, I storm out of the store with ZERO items.  (A similar event happened at a location of this store by where I went to college.  A bag of something rang up for $4 more expensive than the tag and the employee couldn't go check the price so she told me she'd have to charge me what it rang up for...).  I need to find some of my extreme couponing friends and ask them about what the appropriate thing to do is in this situation.  Until then, I am going back to my style of lackadaisical couponing.  Sure, I don't get really cool deals or save any money, but it's a hell of a lot less stressful.

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: