It's a...

Gender Reveal!

Dan and I were able to hold hands as we watched our baby reveal whether whether it was a boy or girl on Tuesday.  We kissed and oohed over the pictures and I cried when I saw the baby's fist move while filling that tiny flutter inside.   I didn't call my family because I wanted to preserve the surprise for later.

An hour later, though, our joy was stolen by a health scare about our baby's kidneys from our doctor that launched us into a panic, complete with stricken text messages for prayers, hysterics, and both of my parents driving to be with us for a meeting with a specialist the next day.  It's a long story for another day (one that I'll definitely share). In short, we found out 18 hours later that our doctor had been wrong about what she thought she saw.

  So much to be thankful for.

Since we didn't really celebrate the day we found out, I put together a silly, cliché, dyed icing in the middle of a cupcake reveal!

Before launching into it, a few thoughts on the oh-so-controversial idea of a gender reveal: 

* If you're not in the mood for baby stuff or have a hatred for pastries filled with pink or blue icing, feel free to skip this post.  

* I think it's cool when people wait to find out the sex!

* I didn't want to wait because none of this seems real yet.  Now that I can call the baby by name, it does!

* I know that I am really revealing the sex, not the gender (which is determined much later), but "sex reveal" sounds icky.

* Finding out had NOTHING to do with me wanting to buy uber, gender specific clothes, like a onesie with "Daddy's Princess" or a boy's cap that says "Little Slugger."  Or, worse, a pink dress emblazoned with, "Diva in Training." For an infant.  Hate that shit.

* If an acquaintance had ever invited me to a par-tay to find out the sex of their kid back when Dan and I were trying (and trying and trying), I would have probably thought #1 -Why the large get-together?  Is this a plea for gifts?  and  #2- I kinda want to punch them in the face.

* Consequently, I only did a gender reveal for my sister, mom, and dad because I knew they were equally excited to find out the news.  I didn't have Dan's mom come because he has a family member on his side who has gone through some baby heartbreak, and it didn't seem appropriate.

* I love a theme.  I think that will be apparent in a minute.  It's my secret shame that I have a penchant for themes and  cute, Pinteresty things, but might as well let my cheesy flag fly.

* This was a totally unnecessary but fun family dinner.  Glad I did it!

Sorry if this is coming off like a disclaimer.  Just wanted to share my reasoning for all of this, so it doesn't seem too self-indulgent.  Maybe it is a little, but the five of us there really enjoyed it.  :)

Without further ado, here is my family dinner with the theme of: 

What will Baby T "Bee"?

I changed out the ribbon and sign on our wreath:

Notice the honeycomb ribbon I found?

The table with yellow flowers and napkins:

The menu revolved around two things: 

honey (bee theme) and raspberries (since my sister calls our love dub "Razbaby").

Our living room got in on the theme:

I bought sunflowers and lemons, popped the ultrasound pictures in the frame, and made little photo props:

I couldn't resist picking up this beehive drink dispenser for the honey lemonade for $20.  Figure we can use it for future BBQ's:

Lastly, I set up a little dessert table:

I see these all over Pinterest constantly and thought it would be fun to try one if for no other reason than that I would have an excuse to buy stripey straws.  For some unfathomable reason, I love fun straws.  

I made the lemonade glasses by buying iced coffees with leftover Starbucks gift cards and scrubbing off the labels.  Cute, no?  I found the directions from here.

I ordered Queen Bee (honey flavored) cupcakes for the reveal from my favorite cupcake place and had them put colored icing in the center.

Way too many sweets for five people... The cake pops were free (bought with the leftover Starbucks gift cards from students.  I don't drink coffee, so I always have a ton of them).  I made the labels using Word and with some fancy paper I had for the kids to use at school:

I bought the tablecloth from Target back in January: 

My sis and I posing.  No, my yellow, striped shirt was no accident, but it was one I already owned.

 My family's guesses on the sex:

I held up both the mustache and the lips.  Jokes ensued about how if our baby is a girl, she would still have a mustache. Beth and I have had to wax since middle school.

 #italiangirlsarehairy

We celebrated Dan's birthday:

 They drank raspberry beer:

 My insanely generous parents and amazing sister surprised me with gifts bags: two pink and two blue, with instructions that I could only open one color later. :)  Corny, "what will baby bee?" pics followed:

Dinner seemed to work out well, especially the honey ham biscuits and raspberry/ blackberry salad recipes.  Of course, we kinda rushed a bit to get to dessert!

Moment of truth:

 We are so thankful for our son coming soon!

The rest of the night we just hung out and took more vaguely "creepy uncle" mustache photos:

Bethany updated the bottom of my chalkboard door:

Pour some sugar on me

Oh, hello!  It's been a while, I know.

I feel like time is just evaporating.   Poof!  Testing is done!  Poof!  Our house has been on the market almost a month!  Poof!  End of the year clean-out is beginning.

Not much to tell.  Life has been crazy busy and it feels so wonderful to just have a lazy, rainy evening to actually write.

Hmm... what first?  I had to have my sugar glucose test at ten weeks, which is eighteen weeks earlier than most people, because my blood test showed my sugar levels were too high.

Basically, you drink a sugary, flat Tab and then they take your blood.  It really wasn't bad (why do pregnant women bitch so bitterly about this??), but I took funny pics for my sister nonetheless with my phone:

Grossed out face:

"Nailed it" face:

My results?  I completely failed the test... even after cutting out all white carbs and ice cream for two weeks beforehand.

I went in for a second three hour glucose test. 

They took my blood. I had to gulp down a drink with twice the amount of sugar as the first test within five minutes, but this time, I kept gagging throughout it.  My trick was to take little shots of it and "chase" it with water.

I waited an hour (no eating or moving).  They took my blood.

I waited another hour (still no food or drink).  Was getting jittery.  They took another blood sample.

I waited another hour (starving and cranky!)  The fourth and last blood sample.

Verdict?  No diabetes, but they vaguely warned me to "watch", but not cut out, my sugar.  Basically, I'm down to one dessert a week and have tried to limit my carbs.  In short, a miserable morning, but over in three hours, so I really can't complain.  And I actually had time to finish this book.  It's been a balancing act because I didn't want to cut calories, so cheese and bacon has been this girl's best friend.

Speaking of diet, we went to our favorite food festival, except this time there were no fried crickets.  There was, however, a bacon, lettuce, and seared WATERMELON sandwich.  Amazing!

I saved my sugar calories for this: salted. caramel. cake.

  What else?  I stopped working out for the first twelve weeks of my pregnancy because I was terrified of miscarrying and since thirteen weeks I have only been doing fairly gentle exercises, the calorie equivalent to old ladies swishing around at water aerobics.  Consequently, I have a concave ass now.  Seriously, my pants are tight in the front (yay!  starting to show!) and baggier in the back.  Not that I had a big booty or anything before, but with cutting out a lot of the carbs and not doing any lunges or anything, my ass is apparently in hibernation for now.  Katelyn, one of my favorite coworkers, and I were laughing about its disappearance.

Also... Dan and I did a million small improvements to our house (took down a dying tree, landscaped, cleaned, repainted ceilings, bought a stainless steel oven, reglazed our tile, and staged more than Martha Stewart).  We are trying to move to a slightly bigger place with better schools with our baby on the way.

  It's been on the market for a month with no bites.  At least I get to enjoy some of the staging swag that I bought, like new throw pillows on our bed:

I'll have to post the nickel tour with all the improvements because I have to say, our house has never looked this good!  Too bad no one seems to want to come for a second viewing.  We've had a ton of traffic, but no repeat traffic, which is probably not that promising.  I kinda feel like our house is online dating, and no one is giving her a chance, you know?

So between cleaning and updating our house, I've had no time to write.  I've also had to do three all day, seven hour college classes for my library science degree on Saturdays. The classes are an hour and a half drive away, and each time, it has poured rain for the entire day like the world is crying that I have to be inside on a Saturday listening to a discussion about whether today's students are "technology natives or not".  #nerdiestdiscussionever

Of course, the most important for last:... I've gotten to hear our baby's heartbeat three times now.  I've cried each time.  I love that sound.  I have a post I wrote at seven weeks when I heard it for the first time that I still need to share.  It sounds like "love dub, love dub, love dub, love dub."

We have been calling him/ her "love dub" ever since. 

I'll keep you posted on the gender as soon as we find out (which is very soon.)  With one week of school, I'm hoping to be much better at posting!

First Trimester

Your comments on my last post each made me smile!  Thank you so much for each one!  Oh, and feel free to skip this post if you are not in the "hear about baby stuff" mood.  I've been there and completely understand.

Anyway, writing about being pregnant the other day made it seem a bit more real. I guess it still hasn't fully sunk in.  And it probably hasn't helped that during my first trimester, I had an almost OCD-like tendency of stopping myself from fully celebrating or recording every moment because I was so afraid of losing.  It was getting to the point where I was acting a little crazy. Like at six weeks, I started feeling the same weird, horrible, period-like back pains that I had before my previous loss, and I completely lost it with a co-worker, gulping out "I think I might be about to miscarry!" between quiet sobbing. I walked right by adorable gender-neutral bibs I would have loved to have bought, oddly thinking that dolling out five bucks on a baby item would somehow jinx our future happiness.  I waited until ten weeks to take my first picture of myself. When I never got nausea even once, I spent an hour Googling "no morning sickness bad sign??" and reading Yahoo answer boards.  Little tip:  Googling fears is never a good idea.

Now, though, I've decided it's time to record all the joy of this first trimester! First, I decided that I just had to tell my family in a fun way: customized fortune cookies.  They love a surprise, so I thought it would be different to reveal the news creatively.

  I bought a box of store-bought fortune cookies and printed out little slips of paper that read,

 Baby T (hopefully) coming in Fall 2013!

(Note that the OCD side of me just had to insert that desperate word "hopefully"...) 

Then, I found super easy directions (from here) on how to make customized fortune cookies online and spent a half hour fashioning about a dozen of them.   Lastly, I jazzed them up by following more online directions on how to make them fancy with chocolate and sprinkles.

This was taken about three weeks later, which is why they look a little gross now- ha ha!

Anyway, my parents stopped by on their way through town when I was barely seven weeks along.  While Dan and my dad picked up the take-out Chinese food, my mom asked me how I was doing with the baby stuff.  I, of course, answered in my best Eeyore tone: "Oh, you know, I'm plugging along" while thinking "Can. Not. Wait. Until. Dessert. Time. CanNOTwaituntildesserttime!"

After dinner, I put out the plate of cookies.  My mom broke hers open first.  "You are!?!"  I nodded and then she was tearing up and hugging and wooping.  My dad never had a chance to read his but didn't need to. Hugs, wooping, me recounting how I said "thank you" to the fertility doctor for doing the HSG which, I believe, was key in all of this, to which Dan joked to both of us, "Hey, I think I had something to do with it too!"  Ba dum ching. We all held hands and dad gave the most beautiful prayer.  I remember looking up and seeing my handsome husband's face streaked with tears.  I'll never forget that moment.

Telling my sister was hilarious.  She came in town for a wedding a week later, so I gave her a leftover fortune cookie saying, "It was Foreign Language Week at school and I know you love these, so I grabbed a few from the resource room."  She snapped hers open... and her face went completely white.  She looked completely aghast.

Me:  "What does yours say?"

Her: ...

Me:  "Does it say anything interesting?"

Her:  Uh...

Me:  "Um...It's true!  I am."

Her:  "Huh?" 

Me: "I'm pregnant!"

Her:  "YOU'RE PREGNANT???  EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Me: EEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! 

(Screaming, hugging, screaming)

Her:  "I was so upset!  When you said you got it from the resource room during Foreign Language Week, I thought some bitch at your school made the cookies because she thought you might get pregnant before then, and I was trying to think of how to lie to you about the fortune cookie message.  You told me about how some of the older teachers are always saying insensitive things, and I was about to cut somebody for this one!"

I told Bethany that her niece or nephew was the size of a rapberry, so the next day over brunch, she plucked a raspberry off her dessert and made me pose with it.  (Yep, the below photo looks like she's cupping my boob, but she's actually pointing at my non-existent bump.)

She has called him or her "Raspberry" ever since.  "How's my raspberry doing??"  "Has Raspberry kicked yet??"  Finally, I made the point that our little guy or gal is (hopefully... yes, there's that word again) much, much bigger now and demanded that she change it to Razbaby instead.  Bethany has never held back on her absolute giddiness, which was refreshing when I was sick with worry, but she obliged me anyway. 

Last weekend, she gave me the most perfect gift, simply saying,

 "This is for my Razbaby":

Not sure if you can tell, but that is a raspberry shaped teether. :)

In short, people have been so sweet and excited and amazing.  Just for fun, I thought I'd share this photo of two little gifts from one of my crazy generous best friends:

Is that video not pefect??

And I was completely over-whelmed by this last gesture.  When I finally entered week 14, out of the endless first trimester, my mom was smiling and handed me an enormous bag.  She had wanted to wait until I was in a slightly safer time zone, but she and my dad had decided to surprise me with 14 little presents:    one for each week.  They had known how I had been trying to temper my excitement to "protect" myself, but I guess they couldn't anymore.

There are no words for how generous and loving this was.  I'm still speechless.

I promise that this blog won't become only about baby stuff!   It just feels so good to finally talk about some of the joy of that whirlwind first few weeks.  It crawled by at the time, but now I can't believe I'm into the second one already...

The post I've been waiting a long time to write

  

Over the past year, I've listed to Mumford and Sons' wistful song "I will Wait for You" more times than I care to admit.  You know the one?  The frantic banjo strumming... hot, scruffy, British men at first crooning... then almost crying out an equal parts heart-breaking and triumphant promise:

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

And I will wait, I will wait for you

 

Those lines really resonated with me.

I've played it on my iPhone non-stop, a soundtrack to my life during every tearful call to my mom, every nightmare pastel baby shower, every "Do you have any kids?" query from other teachers, even the infamous daycare football party. 

It was a waiting game for having a kid.  This is not unusual, I know.  Many of you probably have a similar story.

Of course, the waiting began much earlier than this year.  Dan and I started trying for a baby in late 2009.  Fast forward a mortgage in ovulation tests and a year and half later, I finally saw a plus sign.  And then I was crying in the shower after my miscarriage six and a half weeks later.   Fast forward another few months just to gather my sanity, and we began again. 

I started to listen to this song, imagining singing it to a child that did not exist yet, month after month, fear creeping in.  Even Dan's usual sunny attitude was being chipped away, with him finally breaking down on New Year's Day.  We kept changing our strategies: let's try every day!  Or every other day! Or let's set an alarm for 4am! Or how about I keep my legs up!  Or everyone is telling us to relax so break out the wine!  Or I'll get a new timing app! Or I'll drink pomegranate juice! Or I'll drink cough syrup! Or let's both change our diets!  Or let's buy PreSeed! Or let's buy a different brand of ovulation kits! Or you should get tested!  Finally, I resolved to can the old wives' tales and see a fertility doctor, a decision that was a long time coming.

But I'll kneel down, Wait for now, I'll kneel down, Know my ground

And I will wait, I will wait for you


Today, I listened to it for the first time in sixteen weeks and smiled and teared up a bit and hugged Dan a little tighter.  As you may have guessed, I'm pregnant, finally into my second trimester. I just can't believe it in some ways!
*
 Sometimes, I felt kinda alone through all of this, and I realized afterwards with all the insensitive commenters in my life (mostly at school, never on this blog), there were also so many people rooting for us: friends, family, and even on this tiny blog.  That's another post for a different day, but thank you for anyone who has commented or commiserated or even written a private message on my Facebook. It meant so much!
*

This is probably an overly emotional post.  Most people just post an ultrasound photo and call it a day. I haven't gone through anything compared to others who have suffered through infertility for years and years, through IVF, through endless heart-break.  Even though my doctor labeled me otherwise, I guess I was never infertile.  Not really.  I just had to wait and wait. 

Yet even that was truly difficult.  Perhaps you've been there too.  Waiting and waiting for something: to be noticed, to get that proposal, for a career you love, for a baby.  Does it sound insincere that even though I probably have never *met* you, I hope that waiting ends soon?  And that I'm sending out good thoughts??

It feels weird to finally write about this now, when it has been going on for sixteen weeks, but we were just too scared of losing again to throw it out there on the interweb.    I'm still not going to announce it to everyone at my school or Facebook.  I figure that we will gradually tell people that really know us, and the others will catch up if it matters to them. But it feels great to finally say it here!  Yes, we are still scared, but if something were to happen now, I would need to write about it.  And besides, there's so much joy I want to share.  Just to document these past few months, several posts are coming. 

I've been listening to a new song lately: The Beatles' "It won't be long"!  It's my new favorite.

Proscietto Pie Recipe

Sorry, I meant to post this last week!  For anyone wanting a seriously cheesy and delicious meal tonight, this is what I made Dan for his dinner to celebrate his dad in my last post. 

When I say it is cheesy, I'm not playing around:

Tomato pie:


1 frozen deep dish pie crust

1 c of shredded mozzarella cheese

1 c of shredded chedder cheese

4-6 slices of provolone cheese

About 3tbsp. Fresh basil ( cut up)

1/4lb of thin sliced prosciutto

2-3 tomatoes (can also do one large.....depends how tomatoey you want it)

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 of a medium onion


Preheat oven to 350. Thaw frozen crust and prick sides and bottom with a fork. Place crust tin on cookie sheet and bake in oven for 5 minutes.

Saute the onion in a pan until it becomes translucent (can use butter or olive oil for this step, though I just used cooking spray.)



Remove pie crust after 5 minutes and place mozzarella in the bottom. Add basil and prosciutto, then tomato slices, salt and pepper, cooked onions, chedder cheese, and top with enough provolone to cover the top.

Place cookie sheet with pie in oven on the lower rack and bake for 30-35 min until top is golden and melted.

*note: The amounts in this are pretty approximate. If you want more or less cheese or tomato or basil or something, feel free to ad lib.

Pair with a large side salad and you're in business!

Pasta, Peroni, and a Face like a Pepperoni Pizza



Dan and I have carved out a few, small traditions, but they can be hard to stick to given that our immediate "family" consists of just the two of us.  While we try to have a thankful jar each November, it's always at least a week or so into the month before one of us (usually me, but Dan is a good sport about it) remembers to put out a pen and cut-up paper.  We cook our own private but massive waffle breakfast and spend a morning tearing open our gifts to each other two days early to celebrate Christmas because the 24th and 25th are filled with bigger family gatherings.  We try to buy a lotto ticket every January 1st, but have actually forgotten to do this a few years, and just purchased a few days later.  Our traditions are sweet and very us and a little lazy... no big deal if we forget once in a while because, hey, it's just the two of us anyway, and we can always do a rain check for the next year.

But yesterday, we started a new tradition that I hope we'll try to keep up.  It took us six years of marriage to think of it, but this year, we declared that every April 20th to now be "Celebrate Dan's Dad Day."  You see, Dan lost his father to Lou Gehrig's Disease almost fourteen years ago, two years before the two of us met.  I've listened to years of stories about this immeasurable presence in Dan's life. 

I heard about the time where he went to "Bring Your Dad to School Day" and rocked the history category in the class's trivia contest, much to ten-year-old Dan's awe.  (Dan now teaches history, the same passion for visiting nerdy sites very much ingrained in him.) 

We've laughed about his idiosynchrasies, like how he would walk away from the tv if there was a scene with adultry in it.  He was loyal through and through and didn't appreciate watching "garbage" like that. 

He loved smoking the occasional sweet-smelling pipe on Sunday mornings, reading historical biographies, the movies Animal House and Rocky. and eating Italian food.  He thought that his mother made the best homemade marinara sauces and his aunt made the most sublime homemade pasta, so he would somehow get them to occasionally collaborate on spaghetti together to create perfection. 

He used platitudes, both serious and hilarious, which Dan still recites ("You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit."  "When you got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.") 

 He was emotional, a hot-tempered driver, always affectionate, a man not afraid to hug his kids often, even when they were embarrassed because teenage friends were around.

I never got to meet him, but I feel like I partially know him.  I've always been hungry for details, stories, anything to feel more connected to this presence in my husband's life.

I don't know how the idea of a day to celebrate him originated.  I think Dan mentioned someday wanting to start a small scholarship in his Dad's name for a selected student at his high school to help buy books in college.  "After I present this to the student, maybe we could have a big Italian meal where all of my family attends and could, you know, talk about my dad."  One of us suggested that until we begin the scholarship that we celebrate him on his birthday: April 20th.  Dan said that our inaugural celebration could be Italian food and a movie and toasting his father, so that's just what we did.

 I cooked way too much food:

pesto tortellini

 penne with puttanesca sauce and Caesar salad:

and an amazing recipe I borrowed from a friend for something called "proscietto pie."  I'll definitely share the recipe this week because it is damn good, even if it's not a traditional Italian dish. I guess the proscietto made it fit the theme enough for our feast.

Fresh basil for the pie: 

My veggie filled one:

Dan's meat and cheese one:

 

Sunflowers for the table (and an excuse to try my new camera lens):

Lastly, I went to a specialty store to buy Dan some Peroni.  He drank it when we were in Rome, so I thought it would fit.  And he needed something to toast his dad.

After dinner, we went through one of his family photo albums, and then we watched this:

I'd never seen it before, but I've heard it's one of his father's (and family's) favorites. It always made me laugh that his wholesome family is into a movie about drunken frat boys. If anyone brings up the movie, even my mother-in-law will break out with, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son!" quickly followed by a barrage of quotes from Dan and Jacob...

"Laugh now, but you clowns have been on double-secret probation." 

"You fucked up. You trusted us."

"He had a face like a pepperoni pizza."

It wasn't my kind of movie, but I found myself laughing out loud a few times, like at, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

It's hard for Dan to talk about his dad without inevitably circulating back to his long and horrific illness, so we made a very deliberate point for April 20th will be a joyous night,  be a celebration about him, about his life.  So that's what it was: just us mauling pasta, laughing about the time his dad corrected a docent at Monticello, and capping the night off with Belushi chanting, "Toga! Toga!" 

Well done, Mother Nature

Today is my birthday, and last night we were treated with a freak two inches of snowfall... enough to get Dan and I off for a snow day!  In March!  For my birthday!

Suffice to say, there was some celebratory robot dancing that went on in our house when our school divisions called the news.

So to celebrate turning 32, we've been lounging, watching bad t.v., and hanging at our favorite coffee house for sandwiches and chai lattes.  I'm actually posting from the coffee house right now:

I know it's been a ridiculously long time since I've written anything.  Some of you are so skillful at posting regularly, of having so much to say even when life gets busy, which I envy.  With Dan's brother's wedding earlier this month (hilarious stories involving family drinking moonshine to follow soon) and getting my students ready for SOL's (no hilarious stories about that shit coming... promise) and a few car and home annoyances and my mom's birthday and me being under the weather, I haven't had much time to sit and just be. 

But now I do!  Because I have a snow day! Woop Woop!

Dan surprised me for my birthday by taking me to a charming B & B in Charlottesville.  He's not a fan of charming B & B's, bitching about the forced small talk over breakfast and the grandma vibe, but I love the coziness (and freshly baked cookies), so he indulged me.

The one thing Dan did love about this place was their wine and cheese hour.  He reminded me of that episode of Friends where Ross tried to "break even" with a B & B by indulging in all the free stuff.  You know, the one where he stole a bushel of apples and a slew of free shampoos?  Dan just downed three glasses of wine and enough brie and crackers to cater a WASP's funeral.

What else?  We just went hiking and also strolled around the town and UVA's campus.  We were treated with this spectacular display of nerdiness:

Can you guess what sport? If not, you are officially a hopeless Muggle. 

It was a game of Quiddich.

Check out the gear:

Note the guy on the left with a pole nestled by his groin, a la a broomstick.

Dan and I watched the bloodbath for several minutes, students grunting and body rocking each other with the ferocity of NFL players.  They "rode" PVC pipes the entire time.  Dan commented several times on the probability of "mashed nuggets".

I guess the goal is to get a bludger through one of the rings.  I realize that me knowing what the ball is called makes me as big of a Potterphile as these guys, so the judging ends now...

Not much else to tell about our trip, just delicious dinner followed by strolling to The Melting Pot for chocolate fondue.  Fondue is becoming a bit of a birthday tradition.  It's been a sugar overload this weekend with the fondue and cookie and tres leche cake my mom brought yesterday:

Which we proceeded to take a ton of posed pictures with because it was almost too pretty to eat:

Over a month of no posting and you all just get this one with Quiddich... and shots of the desserts I ate yesterday.  I love how blogging captures the little moments, you know??  Off to nap before Mexican with friends.  Will be better about posting!