Growing Things

A table full of plants: free.
Thanks to our landlord for making letting me take care of all his plants while he's gone (yeah, he said he was going to Ukraine in September when we moved in, but several delays, postponed flights, and suspicions about whether-or-not-he-was-going-to-leave later, he did... in april).

A plant ladder: also free.
Thanks Pinterest for the idea and the landlord for leaving this ladder here. Because he was totally going to take it with him, just like the plants, right?

Awesome Peruvian llama and alpaca collection: thanks dad! I really must get a better picture of them.

Finally filling in the empty spaces in the picture frame we got for our wedding: priceless.
How wonderful is it that we've grown our family to include another member? 

Actually, the price is that we have to look at these really horrid pictures of ourselves every time we walk past. Good incentive to get some family pictures done, right? It's on my to-do list.

Until then, ugh.

So during the last few weeks I've gone kind of plant crazy. Our landlord left several sprawling geraniums, a few elephant ear plants, some kalanchoe, Christmas cactus, and a horrible old aloe vera. I've sort of dedicated my time to trying to make these plants look a little better.

For starters, the aloe plant had twelve or so pups growing off of it. I was able to separate those and pot them up. Most of them look really well now. The mother plant is looking better too, but I don't think there's anything I can do for the awful sprawl.

It has to be supported by another planter. Yikes!

Next, the geraniums (blooming in red, white, and two shades of pink) look like weeds (look at how tall the one in the very first picture is). Seriously, they're ugly. I'm trying to get them to bush out more by cutting off a few of the taller sections and making those into their own plants. I think I may have been too gentle and I need to trim them even further. Gorgeous blooms though.

The Christmas cactus is a horrid old woody plant, but boy does it have some fabulous blooms in the winter. I trimmed that way back and I'm giving away a ton of the pieces as starts.

I complain, but it really is nice to be surrounded by so much greenery. It's exciting having things growing all around you. Between the plants and the baby, growing things pretty much rule my world right now.

Oh yeah! I had a baby!

Yay! here's the "I had my baby" post, just about four months after the fact.

Michael Orion was born January 20th at 3:56 AM after putting me through a day or so of non-progressive, excruciating back labor. After going in to the hospital, being sent home because I was only at a 3 (poo!), and going in again the next day around the same time, still at a 3, I decided the epidural was the thing for me. And boy, was it bliss. After that, labor went really well, and before I knew it, I was holding my beautiful baby boy in my arms and feeling very blessed to have had such a relatively smooth experience. I am so thankful for modern medicine. I probably would have been too exhausted by the time I got to push if I hadn't been able to get the much needed sleep enabled by that epidural.

It's crazy (albeit cliche) how fast the days have gone by, but my baby is already almost four months old (just a few more days!), and he really is a sweetheart. He's smiling a lot, cooing, grunting, and even giggling now. He loves mornings, waking up several times a night to eat, and going for walks now that the weather is nicer. He is the most beautiful blend of me and Steve. I am undoubtably biased, but I think he's pretty darn adorable.

Ok, that's enough sappy fawning over my little cherub (you know, the kind that drools and doesn't sleep well at night). Here are a couple of pictures. Over and out.

Everything you didn't want to know about my pregnancy

Warning: Long, wordy post with no pictures ahead. Proceed with caution.

We celebrated our three year anniversary this year and had a good time of it. We went out to eat at Da Pineapple Grill, a local restaurant that has the most amazing tangy pineapple chicken that I can't help but order every time we go there, got ourselves a waffle cone maker, and just had a good time. A couple of days later, bright and early in the morning before I had to go open up at Jack in the Box, I took a pregnancy test. Lo and behold, it was positive! I immediately woke Steve up (it's like, 5:30 in the am) and he's all, "What?! really?" because I guess I'm a little bit of a pregnancy hypochondriac, and every little twinge is a pregnancy symptom ("ow, my foot hurts, I must be pregnant!" etc.). Anyways, that's my "how I found out" story. Thankfully it was around our anniversary so I can remember when I found out too.

I've been feeling really well throughout. I feel a little guilty, like I should have been really sick or something, but then I smack myself around a bit and tell myself I don't have any major karma coming back to get me, and I'm able to be grateful for the fun experience being pregnant has been. I'm still able to enjoy some pretty good mobility, and I had no morning sickness, so I think I can consider myself blessed.

The closest thing I had to being sick was if I stayed up too late in the first trimester, or didn't have something digesting at all times I would feel pretty rotten, but those were both very easy fixes. I only felt nauseous for about two minutes, like one time. And it was minor. Now that I'm in the beginning of part of the third trimester (wait, what?!) I do feel like I just did about a hundred thousand (million-billion) crunches, and I have no lower abdominal muscles. If I had to do ten sit-ups to save my life I'd probably die at around three. I feel a little like a beached whale when I have to get out of bed some mornings. There's a lot of flopping and rolling and grunting and hoping I don't accidentally crack my head open on the bedside table. Good times. Living with me must seem like living with my 85 year old grandma, just with a little less memory loss.

So that's probably enough whining for now. I'm 26 weeks along, due January 14, which I'm really happy about because it meant I wasn't eight months pregnant in the middle of July, and winter is just my very favorite season. There's something so wonderful about cold air, fresh snow (especially if it's deep!) and the serenity that can come with it. I think it's worth the wait through summer and fall every year just to see the first dusting of snow on the ground. And when everything-- all the dead trees and messy lawns and dirty roads-- gets covered in the first good snowfall, it's like the world is pure and soft and beautiful. I'm just excited to have another winter birthday besides my own, and to have someone else to share it with. Maybe my baby will love winter like I do.

Ahem, rambling aside, I may have neglected to mention that the baby is a boy! My sister was rooting for a boy so any other chitlins we had would have an older brother. I'm excited, but it's WAY more difficult for me and Steve to agree on boy names than girl names, and that is my major disappointment. Heck, we all but had a girl name on a birth certificate, and then he had to go and be a boy. I am absolutely stumped as far as names go, and it is very frustrating. I guess we'll have to see what he looks like when he's born if we can't decide on one before then. But what am I even saying? Who wrote the rule that said you had to have a name picked out for your baby before he was even born? That's right, there is no rule, and if we have to call him "Baby" for the first couple of weeks of his life, then so be it. Grr.

So that is my story, life is good, being pregnant isn't so bad. I really enjoy feeling him move around, even if it does make me think of that one movie with the aliens that pop out of peoples stomachs ("rarr!"). Maybe by the next time I post I'll have a couple of names to throw out there. Le sigh.