Kelly in NC

I hate pain! I mean absolutely HATE the thought of pain. Of course, I knew that there would come a time in this pregnancy that I would inflict pain upon myself in the form of labor, but I was shielding myself from thinking about that suffering. I refuse to watch the baby story or maternity ward…or any other show that might give me a picture of what it might be like. Instead, I try to picture it more like soap opera or sitcom delivery…over and done within the last 5 minutes of a show. Yes, there is the occasional baby swap on the soap operas…but hey, the labor really doesn’t look that bad. My cloud of oblivion has been officially wiped away as of last night.
Tim and I started our child birth class this month. Last night was our second night and in our discussion about “active” labor, we got to watch a video of a delivery without any pain medication. Now, mind you, our instructor let us know that this delivery was very unusual in that her contractions were spaced 7 minutes apart, giving the mom plenty of time to recoup before the next onset of pain. I am now a bit “terrified” of this entire experience. Or at least I am in my dreams.
Last night I was plagued with dreams about delivery…most of them had me crying saying “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Begging anyone who was in the room to please make it stop. Now I am sure that the gas pains I had last night had something to do with the nightmares…but I do think that there is a real fear lurking inside my brain as well. My mantra all along has been “Millions of women have done this, so can I.” Well, it seems as if that mantra is starting to fail me. The class instructor said that if you fear labor then it can create a cycle of fear= tension= more pain= fear and that by taking these classes, we will reduce the fear because we will know what to expect. Well, I hope that in our next 3 classes I learn something that will make my fear go away.
On a more humorous note, check out this picture that was in our “birth companion book”:

Tim says that he wants us to try out this move during labor in an attempt to alleviate my pain. For some reason, giving my husband a piggy back ride does not seem like a “comfort position” to me.

Also, how about these words of compassion that are meant to make your wife relax during active labor? Tim especially like the one highlighted with the red arrow.

I told Tim that if he even mumbled those words I would shove the baby right up his a** and see how comforting they sounded to him.

The real question is: Is this book serious? Or were these items just put in the book to make sure people were really paying attention?

One of the traits that I was blessed with at birth was the ability to easily lose things. I can even remember as far back as Kindergarten losing a very nice gold ring that had a garnet stone. I am not sure I will ever forget the feeling of having to go home and tell my mom. I felt so disappointed.
Well, the trait has not gotten any better in my 29 years and today I think I reached a whole new level of disappointment. This time it wasn’t just myself I was letting down. I was afraid that I was going to really, really, really disappoint Tim. The problem is that the item I lost was a very expensive and sentimental item…my engagement ring. Here is how the whole thing happened:
Last week while at school, my finger had swollen so terribly that I needed to remove my rings. Since I was at school I did not have a safe place to put them, so I a placed them in the change pocket of my purse and zipped the pocket up. The intention was to take the rings out of the purse and put them in a safe place once I got home. Well, I forgot. Then this morning I jumped in my car and saw laying on the passenger side seat my wedding band. My stomach immediately dropped. “Oh my God, where’s my engagement ring?” See last night when I went to Eckerd, I opened my change pocket when it was time to pay and forgot to zip the pocket back up. Then at some point my purse fell over and all the contents spilled out (this happens quite often in my clumsy little world). So when I spotted my wedding band on the seat, I immediately thought, now when was the last time I saw my other ring? At that point I completely dumped my purse out and rummaged through the contents. While I did find some interesting things (a gift card I forgot I had, some cool bobby pins, and an old gum wrapper) my engagement ring was not there. I decided to go ahead and leave forwork. There was no reason to alert Tim to my problem yet and it would give me at least 8 hours to think about other places that I might find the ring and if worse came to worse come up with some really good excuse as to what had happened. (See Tim does not have much patience with my “irresponsibility” and on numerous occasions he has pointed out that I might lose something really important if I didn’t start zipping up my purse. So of course, there is no way that I could tell him the truth!)
By the time I reached work I had already come up with a few excuses or ways to get out of trouble- from buying a whole new engagement ring (not likely since there is no way I could sneak that much money out of our savings account without throwing up a red flag) to just reporting it to our insurance company. On my drive I had sent numerous prayers up to God and to Saint Anthony (who will help you find lost things-thanks for telling me about him Beth) in hopes that some devine intervention might help me. I had also come up with a plan of action staring first with completely tearing my car apart, in hopes that it was there…somewhere.
Once I parked my car, I searched my purse a second time and then started in on my car. After searching for a good 10 minutes, I was beginning to feel desperate. What was I going to do? How was I ever going to explain this? I decided to put it off a bit longer and continue to think. Something would come to me I was sure! So I grabbed my lunch and the Eckerd bag from my purchases the night before and started into the building. Out of nowhere this excellent idea flashed in my mind. (I am sure that it was St. Anthony.) “Check the Eckerd bag.” And so I did. I was so relieved when there, shining up from the bottom of the bag I found it…my engagement ring! Looking so innocent, as if it had not caused me a good 40 minutes of grief this morning. Needless to say, my day turned out a lot better than I had first expected and now I don’t have to worry about disappointing my husband. So for those of you who did not know about Saint Anthony. Here is my plug: Try him, he works!

So what would you rather do? Show your significant other how much you love her and how grateful you are for her carrying your evil spawn or watch NASCAR? Read below for my husbands answer to this question!

About 2 weeks ago, Tim came up with this very thoughtful idea of taking me away for my birthday weekend. As is his style, he brought up the subject; got me all excited about it, and then dropped the ball. Instead of crying about it (which I might have secretly wanted to do…due to the hormones in my body as a result of the “spawn” mentioned above), I just told him in a calm (not tearful) voice that I was disappointed and that he would have been better off not to mention it to me at all. Now of course he would comment something along the lines of: “See how things get turned around? I was just thinking about doing something nice and now I’m the bad guy.” Bad guy? No…but a disappointment…well, maybe on that particular day.

Beginning this week, Tim has been trying to “secretly” plan a trip for this weekend. Now by secret, I should tell you that Tim is not very good about keeping secrets. He says things like “Were you planning to do something this weekend?” or “I’ve got to use the computer tonight and don’t come up here to see what I’m doing.” Well, anyone with a little intuition (me) would know what he was talking about, but being the great wife I am, I just played along, as if I had no clue.

Then last night, he mentions that he has been looking for a cabin to rent for the weekend, but that everything is booked up. Could this be because it is the weekend before Valentine’s Day and he has waited until 4 days before he wanted to go to even start looking for a reservation? Perhaps. But then, he happened to mention one other little fact. Not only was this the weekend before Valentine’s Day, it is also the weekend of the first NASCAR race of the season. No, cabins in NC do not get booked because there is a NASCAR race, but a true NASCAR fan might try to find a reason to stay near a TV in order to watch the race.

So to answer the question asked earlier: What would you rather do, go away for the weekend or watch NASCAR? I guess the answer is watching the race. Lucky me!

I have always considered myself rather savvy with technology. I edit my own digital home videos, fix the computer any time Tim has a “melt down”, and can usually fix any “tech” problem that creeps up at home or work. However, the whole “blog thing” has made me feel very frustrated! When my sister started a blog a few month’s ago… (Her link is on the right hand column) I became addicted to reading the blogs of other people. I had alredy begun a website to keep everyone updated on the pregnancy and finally a few weeks ago I decided to add to that website my own blogl. That is when my frustration began!
While I consider myself “tech savvy” I do not consider myself an expert. Renee insisted that her blog was easy to use (of course she did have a friend help set hers up) and I figured if she can do it, I can do it. This website at blogsome is actually my 2nd attempt at making a blog. The first was scratched because I couldn’t get my pictures uploaded on to it. I think that it was a problem with my popup software, but cannot be sure. After many attempts, I finally gave up and tried another site…this one at blogsome. Yesterday, I was on the verge of scratching the entire blog idea altogether because of a new problem: the comments that people left wouldn’t post to the site.
Now, anytime Tim is having a problem with the computer my “canned” comment to him is: “It isn’t a computer problem, it’s a user problem. Computers only do what they are programmed to do!” These comments, of course, drive Tim up the wall, especially when I am right! And on this occasion, at least with the blogsome website, my comment was true as well. Today, feeling a bit calmer, I decided to try to fix it again. Viola! With a clear mind and a bit of patience I found the setting that will fix my “comment” issue. Or at least I hope it fixes the problem. I guess we will find out soon!
So for those of you who have called and emailed to let me know that your comment would not post, I think that I have fixed it now. It truly was a user problem. After all, “computers (and websites) only do what they are programmed to do!”
…If only that were true for husbands too! But that’s a different post, for a different day!

One of my goals over Christmas break was to finish setting up the nursery. I am disappointed to report that I did not reach this goal…and one month later I am not even close. Now I can think of 100 reasons why the nursery still looks like an office (plus a crib) but I will spare you the boring details. (Except that part of the problem is that Tim has still not moved the phone and cable lines into our guest room, so the computer must remain in its current location…the soon to be nursery!) But I cannot blame all of my lack of motivation of Tim…
So now that it is one month after Christmas and less than 11 weeks until my due date, I have regained my motivation. I have decided to start with painting the room. I think that I can accomplish even if Tim continues to “slack” with moving the computer. If you look below you will see three photos of the crib that I was able to edit the wall color. What is your suggestion for room color?

After celebrating my birthday last week and my niece’s birthday on Sunday, it really made me start thinking about how fun birthdays were as a kid. Now don’t get me wrong, I had a wonderful birthday this year. Tim even remembered to buy me a cake, he took me out to a really nice restaurant that I had been dying to try, and I even celebrated with friends over the weekend. But, like Christmas, birthdays seem to have lost some of thier excitement.

It was so fun to watch my niece Kellynn, so excited that everyone was there because of her! She ran from friend to friend, and from one acitivity to the next…basking in the glory of “her” day. And then when it was present time…watch out! And of course, she loved the cake too!

At what point do we “out of the birthday excitement? Is it at the point when we begin to have expectations of how the day should go? Maybe when we are younger, we are not as caught up in the “who is coming”, “what are we going to do”, “is everyone having a good time”… and so the whole thing is just what it is suppose to be…a PARTY! Anyone else wish that they could go back to one of their childhood birthdays and experience that again?? If so, which one would you choose and why?

For me, I would go back to one of my elementary school birthdays. I can’t remember which one is was…(and as a middle child there aren’t any photographs to remind me), but I specifically remember a slumber party with all of my closest friends. I remember the excitement of everyone coming home with me after school…all of the strawberry shortcake, return of the jedi sleeping bags, and the presents that I had to wait to open. My mom would always go “all out” with a cake, games, movies, and food. I remember looking forward to that day and counting down the minutes until school was out so that the slumber party would begin!
Ahhh, memories.

Anyhow, thanks to everyone who helped make this birthday special. I feel lucky to have so many friends and family members who care about me! I only hope that I can try to remember your birthdays and repay the kindness! (Of course, we all know that that is one of my faults,,,unable to remember important dates.)